When Worlds Collide
by AndromedaStarr
Summary: AU fic. A House and CSI Miami crossover. House, on vacation, witnesses a murder. Horatio investigates. Madness ensues. Slash, just because I said so. Rated for slash, language and all sorts of shenanigans. Please review.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: AU fic. There are certain differences about this universe that your average observant reader will notice (Horatio never married Marisol, who likewise never got cancer; Speedle never became a CSI; Boa Vista and Wolfe simply don't exist; House is slightly OOC). I have also bent some facts to make things easier for myself. House/CSI: Miami crossover. House, on vacation, witnesses a murder. Horatio investigates. Madness ensues. Slash, just because I said so.

* * *

Miami. You wouldn't think it the perfect vacationing spot for a crippled maverick doctor, and perhaps you'd be right. But that didn't stop Gregory House from going there at least twice a year every year like clockwork.

And who wouldn't love Miami? Sun, sand, drugs, nightclubs. Something for everyone. House personally didn't have much appreciation for the sun or sand, and the drugs he used weren't anything you could get on the streets, but oddly enough, he had discovered a strange affinity for Miami's club scene. When the hot young aspiring models had imbibed enough tequila and margaritas, they were pretty much willing to flirt - and sometimes more - with anybody. And House was certainly not going to object to drunk teenagers fawning over him. No, he intended to have the time of his life in Miami, and he did, without fail, on every single occasion he was there.

What House had not intended was to witness a murder.

* * *

Horatio Caine took off his sunglasses and looked down at the young man who lay facedown in the alley. Frank said he was a nineteen year old exotic dancer by the name of Leo von Damme. "Alexx?"

"He's so fresh I half-expected him to roll over and talk to me," she reported. "Hasn't been dead more than an hour." She turned the boy over gently, and touched a set of bruises on his neck. "Cause of death is definitely manual strangulation. No defensive wounds, nothing under his nails. He probably knew his killer. I'll tell you more when I get him back to the lab."

"Thank you, Alexx." Horatio slid back on his sunglasses and turned to Calleigh as she came up to him. "What have we got?"

"According to the manager, he was working the poles tonight. He finished his shift at about one-thirty and got on the dancefloor. Practically half the club spoke to him or danced with him. His roommate Kyle Slater found him in the alley at ten minutes to three."

"Hey, H." Delko came up. "We got a guy here who's demanding to see you. Says he's a doctor from New Jersey. Name's House."


	2. Chapter 2

House, sitting on the sidewalk outside the club with his cane across his lap, cursed himself yet again for being such an idiot. What had possessed him to come to Edge in the first place? Hell, what had possessed him to go into the bathroom just in time to see Leo being choked?

"You wanted to see me?"

House looked up to see a man with unbelievably red hair standing over him. He was dressed all in black, and was wearing sunglasses. At night.

"And you would be?" he asked.

"Lieutenant Horatio Caine." Horatio took off his sunglasses. His eyes were blue. "And _you_ would be?"

"Doctor Gregory House," House replied. "I run a teaching hospital in New Jersey."

"A little far from home, aren't you, Doctor?"

"You don't go on vacation in your own backyard," House pointed out. "Anyway, I figured I should make this investigation a whole lot easier for you. I saw it."

Horatio's response was alarming. He dropped into a crouch that brought him so close to House that the doctor actually shifted back against the wall in surprise. "You saw the murder?"

House sighed inwardly. "I got here at one o'clock. I spoke to Leo around two o'clock."

"What did you talk about?"

"Nothing exciting, I'm afraid. Just normal can I buy you a drink stuff."

Horatio raised an eyebrow.

"It _is_ a gay club," House said.

"Go on."

"So I bought him a drink. I think he wanted a margarita. We talked a while, probably twenty minutes. He moved on, went to talk to..." House squinted into the night, and gestured with his chin to a young blond man who was talking to Delko. "Him. I didn't see him again until around quarter to when I went to answer a call of nature and saw Leo being choked in the bathroom."

"What did you do?" Horatio asked.

"You have to understand the context of this choking. It was erotic asphyxiation." House could have laughed at the look on the lieutenant's face if he didn't think it was going to get him into trouble. "He was braced against the counter. The other guy was tall, dark hair, well dressed, expensive leather shoes. Early thirties. I hadn't seen him in the club before and I didn't see him in it after."

"What did you do?" Horatio repeated.

"I figured it was none of my business and used the ladies'." House rolled his eyes. "Come on, there was no way I was interrupting that."

Horatio remained noncommittal. "Go on."

"Go on and say what? I don't know what happened after that. Ten to three or five to three, the roommate came running in all hysterical yelling for someone to call an ambulance. I'm a doctor, so while he was calling the ambulance, I went outside with Kyle and checked his pulse. He was already dead. But I saw Leo with hands around his neck in the men's room, not in the alley."

"Okay." Horatio nodded. "Thank you. How long are you in Miami, Doctor?"

House heaved a sigh. "How long do you need me here?"

"If you give me a contact number, I'll let you know."

House gave the man his cell number and watched as he disappeared into the night.

* * *

"What have you found?"

Alexx looked down at Leo von Damme. He had been an astonishingly good-looking young man - one of the few males who could be termed beautiful - and perhaps he still was in death. She stroked his hair lightly. So he'd been an exotic dancer. That didn't mean he'd deserved to die.

"He had anal sex just prior to his death," she said. "There's no reason to suggest it wasn't entirely consensual. I found traces of lubricant."

"Biologicals?"

"Well, his partner definitely used a condom, but I think we may be able to get saliva from the hickeys on the back of his neck and epithelials from these." Alexx pointed to the bruises on his neck. "Take a look at them."

Horatio eyed the configuration of bruises. "They're from behind. Well, that would fit with the doctor's story about erotic asphyxiation."

"Calleigh took his clothes," Alexx said, and touched Leo's cheek. "Poor baby. He probably had no idea what he was getting himself into."

"Or who was getting into him."

* * *

"We recovered biologicals from the bathroom," Calleigh told him. "Prints and semen on the counter matched the victim, but I lifted three prints from his belt that aren't his. Eric's running them through the database now."

"The killer dressed him afterwards and put him out in the alley," Horatio mused. "Let me know when you find anything."

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'm going to give our doctor a call."

* * *

House was jolted out of a painful doze by the ringing of his cell phone. The number was not one he recognized. "House."

"Doctor," came the voice. "This is Lieutenant Horatio Caine. I'd like to ask you a few more questions."

House gave his thigh a tentative squeeze and was rewarded by a flood of pain. He gritted his teeth. "I'd rather not walk too far."

"Tell me where you're staying and I'll meet you there."

House gave his address and, once he'd hung up, took a Vicodin. Then he began to massage his thigh in earnest. He needed to recover some form of mobility before Horatio got there. Because he needed to shower. And also to put on some clothes.

* * *

Horatio knocked on the door. The man who answered it looked ten times worse than he had last night. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the hand that gripped the cane was white-knuckled. "Doctor House. You don't look too good."

"My leg acts up sometimes." House beckoned him inside and retreated slowly to the couch, where he sat down carefully. "What did you want to ask me?"

"What happened to your leg?" Horatio asked, avoiding the question and removing his sunglasses in the relative darkness of the hotel room.

"Muscle infarction," House replied tersely. "An arterial blood clot. We had to remove part of my thigh muscle."

Horatio eyed the jeans-clad leg as though trying to see some imperceptible difference in size. "That must hurt."

"It does." House's piercing blue eyes flickered away from him. "You obviously haven't found the killer, or you wouldn't be here."

"Doctor -"

"My first name is Gregory."

"Can I call you Gregory?" Horatio asked after a pause.

"You can call me King Richard the Third if it suits you," House answered with a degree of snark that is considered illegal in most developed countries.

Horatio took that freedom and ran with it. "Greg, I want you to go over what happened one more time. Be as detailed as possible. You'd be surprised at what could turn out to be important."

House took a deep breath and leaned back in the couch. He closed his eyes, one hand unconsciously moving to his right thigh. "Leo was bent over with both hands on the counter, the third or fourth sink from the door, pants around his ankles. The other guy was behind him. Tall, maybe six foot three or four. Dark hair. I can't remember his eyes, he was looking in the mirror, not at me. His shirt was half-open. He had a gold chain around his neck."

"Pendant?"

"A letter. Uh...D, maybe. P, B. I don't know, I'm not sure. Oh, and he was wearing a gold wedding ring."

"Did he touch anything?" Horatio asked. "The counters, the mirror, the sinks?"

House opened one eye. "Look, I stood in that doorway for all of three and a half seconds. The guy had one hand on Leo's hip and the other on his dick. He didn't touch anything else while I was there. I don't know what he did after."

"How did Leo look?"

House snorted. "Pretty damn happy. I'm relatively sure it was consensual, Lieutenant."

"Please. Horatio."

"Horatio. Horatio." House rolled the name around in his mouth as though he wasn't sure how it tasted. "How'd you get a name like that?"

"Ever heard of Horatio Alger?"

"The author? Oh, don't tell me. Your parents were fans?"

Horatio nodded. "Believe it or not."

"You _do_ know that Horatio Alger was a pederast, right?" House's eyes glittered with morbid amusement. "An unfortunate namesake for a CSI."

Horatio ignored that. "What were you doing in Edge?"

House arched an eyebrow. "People-watching."

"You came from New Jersey to Miami to watch people?"

"Miami has some ridiculously beautiful people, in case you hadn't noticed," House replied, running a long-fingered hand over his stubble. "You should see some of those girls in there."

"Girls?"

"It's a gay club, but that doesn't mean only gay men go there. There were a lot of girls dancing on the bar that night, some of them straight, most of them in skirts that would give you a heart attack."

"What makes you think girls in short skirts would give me a heart attack?" Horatio's voice was measured. House glanced up quickly, and Horatio continued, "I've been to Edge before, Greg. There aren't that many straight people in there."

"Can't fault me for trying," House said, and shrugged. "Does your team know?"

"Does yours?"

House gave a wry grin. "Like hell." Another pass of his hand over his jaw, and Horatio found himself wondering what it would feel like to touch House's face. "You think you're going to find this guy?"

As if on cue, Horatio's cell rang. "Horatio." Pause. "Nice work. Pick him up. I'll be there in twenty."

"Found something?" House asked.

"The fingerprints on Leo's belt were matched to a Patrick Donahue. Do you think you could positively identify the man you saw in the bathroom?"

"If I saw him again in the throes of wild sex, sure." House snorted. "I can't promise anything, but I'll give it a shot if you want."

"I'll give you a lift downtown."

* * *

House liked the way Horatio automatically slowed the pace of his walk so he didn't have to struggle to keep up. The Vicodin wasn't particularly effective anymore, and House was becoming increasingly desperate for something to ease his discomfort. Distraction was actually proving to be the most successful thing.

"You must see a lot of gore," he commented.

"No more than you do."

"It's similar work. I try to save lives, you...well, I guess you speak for the dead."

Horatio stopped walking and turned to him. One pale finger edged the sunglasses down his nose, and dark blue eyes regarded House seriously. "Yes," he said. "We do. We bring them justice."

"All the justice in the world can't revive a corpse," House said.

"But one person who kills another deserves punishment all the same."

"Do you believe in an afterlife?"

Horatio's lips compressed slightly, and he resumed walking. "I'm taking care of some of the paperwork."

House snorted. "Never heard it put like that before."

"I don't know whether the wicked are punished after death. But I feel a lot safer in my bed at night knowing there's one less maniac on the streets."

"Mm," House said by way of agreement, and Horatio held a glass door open for him. He limped into the room. "Remind me how we're doing this again?"

"You're going to be in here with me. Two of my CSIs are going to walk past with Patrick Donahue. You're going to tell me if he's the man in the bathroom."

"I need a left profile," House said, rubbing his leg.

"Done."

* * *

Five minutes later, they were still sitting at opposite ends of the table in relative silence. Horatio looked up to find the doctor studying him intently. "What?" House asked when their eyes met.

"You're looking at me," Horatio replied calmly.

"I've never seen anyone with hair such a ridiculous shade of red."

Horatio wanted to laugh but stopped himself. "It's natural."

"I know. It goes with your freckles." House shrugged, then remarked casually, "I had an adolescent fixation on redheads."

"I had a thing for blonds with ridged foreheads and blue eyes."

The look on House's face was priceless. "Did you grow out of it?"

"No idea." Horatio glanced to the door. "Okay, they're coming."

The man Calleigh was walking with certainly fit the description of the man in the bathroom. Tall, dark-haired, well-dressed. His shirt was buttoned up to the collar, so Horatio couldn't tell if he was wearing a chain, and his hands were in his pockets.

Across the table, House's blue eyes narrowed. He cocked his head to one side, bit his lower lip. Horatio waited patiently as Delko said something to Donahue, and the man laughed and shook his head. Calleigh glanced at Horatio, and he nodded at her. The three in the corridor disappeared from sight.

"Is it him?" Horatio asked.

House ran a hand over the lower half of his face again. Horatio heard the rasp of skin against stubble. "Yes," he said at last. "Yes. It's his mouth. That's him."

Horatio had the cell phone to his ear. "It's him. Put him in a room and see what you can get. I'll be there in five."

"My work here is done," House said wryly, wiping his hands on his jeans.

"Not so fast. Don't you want to see him in handcuffs?"

"Is that a double entendre?"

"Take it as thou wilt." Horatio stood. "You wait here. I'll be back."

* * *

Patrick Donahue, up close, was every bit as good-looking as Leo von Damme had been, albeit in a different way. Patrick had a rugged jaw and dark eyes that seemed to contain all sorts of bad things, whereas Leo had had an innocence about him. Looking at the man in front of him, Horatio supposed they were opposites, after a fashion - a devil and an angel.

"Mr. Donahue," Horatio said evenly. "Let me cut to the chase here. We have a witness who saw you have sex with Leo von Damme shortly before he was found dead in an alley. We found your fingerprints on his belt."

"It's not illegal to have sex with another man," Donahue responded defiantly.

Horatio refrained from mentioning that it had only been four years since the Supreme Court had repealed the sodomy law. "The witness also saw you choking Leo. His cause of death was manual strangulation. I don't think that was a coincidence." He paused, studying the man. "I think it was an accident."

Something flickered in Donahue's eyes. "I didn't kill him."

"What time did you and Leo finish up?"

"Half past two, maybe. I didn't check my watch."

"That's odd, because my witness clearly said that he saw you in the bathroom at quarter to three." Horatio turned towards the man. "Look, Mr. Donahue - you left bits and pieces of yourself all over Leo. Your saliva and your skin cells on his neck, your fingerprints on his belt. There's an eyewitness who will testify to having seen both of you together with your hands around his neck."

Donahue looked away, fidgeted a little in the chair. "It was an accident," he said at last. "I didn't mean to kill him. He...he liked it rough. He wanted me to choke him. Lack of oxygen...it gives a better orgasm, you know? I guess I didn't let go in time. I didn't know what to do, so I dressed him and, well, left him in the alley. Then I got the hell out of there. I just...oh Christ. I swear I didn't mean to hurt him."

"But unfortunately, you did." Horatio nodded to the officer at the door. "Get him out of here."

* * *

"That was fast," House said.

"You did most of my work for me." Horatio nodded. "Thank you."

"Thank _you_. I saw him in handcuffs."

Horatio smiled. "How did you resolve your adolescent fixation on redheads?"

"Who says I did?" House leaned back in the chair and stretched. "When do you get off?"

Horatio was strongly tempted to ask someone to pinch him. Was he actually being asked out on a date? By a man? By _this_ man? He studied the doctor carefully for a moment, drinking in the details of his appearance - the square, unshaven face, the electric-blue eyes, the tousled hair. Lugubriously sexy, Horatio thought. Like a well-hung eel.

"I could leave now if I wanted," he answered.

"Coffee?"

"Coffee."


	3. Chapter 3

House accepted his latte from the waitress and sat back in the booth. The pain in his leg gnawed away at the back of his mind. He pushed it aside rudely and fixed his eyes on his companion, who was regarding him silently. "You're looking at me."

"It's what I do." Horatio stirred the cappuccino and leaned forward, forearms on the table. "So when do you get back to New Jersey?"

"I have two weeks off. I could conceivably spend all of it here."

"Meaning?"

House shrugged. "Give me a reason to stay."

Horatio picked up the cappuccino and took a sip. His sunglasses hid his eyes, but House didn't need to see eyes to read people. "Miami can be a nice place," he said at last. "If you have the right guide."

Amusement kindled. "Is that an offer?"

"You have to admit that I know Miami a lot better than you do. I've been to clubs you've probably never even heard of."

"Like?"

Horatio toyed with the spoon for a moment. "There's a place downtown called Club Liquid. It's a big night tonight. Do you want to go?"

House wanted to smile. And eventually, he did. "No point. The way my leg's behaving, I'll be on my ass all night. But, if you want, you can come back to the hotel and we can have a few drinks. My bar is stocked."

"No problem. Listen, I gotta run. Can you take a cab back?"

"Believe it or not, I can use public transportation," House replied dryly. "Give me a warning before you get there."

"I'll call you." Horatio drained the cappuccino. "See you later."

"Definitely."

* * *

Horatio tilted his head back and let the water rinse a day's worth of sweat and dirt from his hair. He eschewed the soap in favour of some new cocoa butter body wash that was supposed to be good for his skin, and settled on all black again. Couldn't go wrong with all black. He shaved, cleaned his shoes, took a look at himself in the mirror.

He put on his sunglasses. "Here we go."

* * *

House was entirely unsurprised to see that Horatio, who was standing in the corridor, was wearing sunglasses. "It's night," he remarked, holding the door open.

"Didn't you ever hear that song?"

House ignored the comment. "You smell like...something."

"Something good, I hope."

"You had another shower," House said accusingly.

Horatio's lips twitched ever so slightly in what might have been a smile. "So did you."

House flushed, and he figured he was probably turning a colour that was a shade closer to Horatio's hair than he would have liked. "Are you going to come in or are you content to stand in the corridor and scare the guests?"

Horatio stepped past House without further ado, and wandered into the living room. "You've got a nice view."

House moved to stand behind Horatio, and looked over the redhead's shoulder at the sprinkler-green grass and, about a mile off, the shockingly blue sea. "Yeah, Miami has a lot of nice views. Perry Ellis, right? 360?"

Horatio took off his sunglasses and turned to give House a startled look. "You are unnerving."

"You're not the first to express that opinion." House turned and headed for the kitchen. "Drink? I have..." He squinted into the bottles of alcohol. "Never mind, I'll make you a cosmopolitan."

"Thank you." Horatio slid onto a stool and watched as House put the drink together. Vodka, Triple Sec, cranberry juice and a twist of lime. Ice and a few shakes later, Horatio had an interesting-looking pink drink sitting before him. He took a sip. "Nice."

"Never had one?"

"No."

"First time for everything," House commented, and picked up his own glass. "Is he going to be charged with murder?"

"He'll probably plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter. That carries six years."

"Shame." House swiveled on the stool to look through the glass doors at the water. "Leo was a nice kid. I didn't know him well, but he always remembered me. He had this...smile. Something about him, you know? I know the guy probably didn't mean to kill him, and liking it that rough always comes with a certain element of danger, but still."

"He deserved better."

"We all deserve better." House shook his head. "This is a shitty life."

"It's up to us to make it better where we can," Horatio said simply. "You save lives. I help the dead. We're in the front lines, Greg. We fight the good fight. It's all that matters."

House glanced at his companion. His hair had a glow in the afternoon sun that made House want to run for the fire extinguisher. "What drives you?"

Horatio lowered his head and stared into his cosmopolitan. "The promise of redemption," he said softly. "There are things in my past...terrible things...that I have to atone for. I've been trying for years, but I'm not there yet."

"When will you know when you've done enough?"

"I don't know." Horatio looked up at him, and a tiny shiver crept up House's spine. There was something in those blue eyes, something tortured, something that reminded him uncomfortably of himself. Like looking into a mirror. "I don't know if it'll ever be enough."

House looked out across the ocean, at the vast expanse of water that was just beginning to turn to gold, and slid his left hand over the counter until his fingers collided with Horatio's. He felt his way over the other man's hand, fingertips just barely brushing skin, then took the hand tentatively in his. The light pressure he felt in answer told him it was okay. "It's going to be all right," he said quietly. "You'll make it."

From the corner of his eye, he thought Horatio smiled. "Yes," came the reply. "We both will."

* * *

"It's getting late. I should be going."

They had been on the porch for the last two hours, watching the sun set and making light conversation. Miami lay beneath them, the lights glittering like a thousand diamonds.

"It's not that late," House said unconvincingly.

Horatio smiled and drained his coffee. "It's late enough." He stood up, and House rose as well. They walked silently to the door. "Look," he began awkwardly. "This was...it was nice. I'd like to see you again." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized how needy they sounded. But it was too late to go back now.

House's eyes, more grey now in the darkness, looked steadily at him. "Tomorrow," he said. "Come by after work."

"Okay." Horatio was suddenly aware of his heartbeat. "I'll call you."

"You do that." And before he could protest, House leaned forward and kissed him, just the lightest touch of lips to lips, so light it could almost not be called a kiss. "Goodnight, Horatio."

Horatio put on his sunglasses in the hopes that it would somehow mask his confusion, which of course it didn't. "Good...goodnight, Greg."

* * *

House sank into the couch. _Well, that went well_. What had he been thinking? Not only did he agree to see Horatio again - considering Horatio had an odd effect on him, that was not necessarily an intelligent thing to do - but he had kissed the man. _Kissed_ him.

"Jesus Christ," he said aloud, and decided that it was about time he found another messiah to blaspheme.

What the hell was he doing? He'd come from New Jersey to Miami entirely devoid of any intention to do anything more serious than heavy flirting or perhaps a one-night stand or two. And what was this? Gregory House was entering the dating scene? He'd have to hide this from the ducklings when he got back - not to mention Wilson.

House got up, headed for the bedroom, and popped a Vicodin. He couldn't think. Sleep would have to do for now.

* * *

"H." Delko knocked on the door. "You mind if I go home early? I caught up on my backlog, I just got a couple more things to do."

"Sure, Eric." Horatio smiled. "You and Calleigh have fun."

Delko's boyish face flushed, and he ducked his head. A small smile curved his lips. "How'd you know?"

"Because it's obvious."

"You've been acting kind of funny lately." Delko was watching him. "If I didn't know better I'd say you got yourself a girlfriend."

"Maybe I have," Horatio said with deliberate mysteriousness, and smiled. "Go on, Eric. Take care."

Once Delko was gone, Horatio stood up and paced the length of the small room with measured strides. He paused by the glass door, looking out across the manicured lawns of the lab, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. The voice that answered was rough, like Horatio had just woken him from sleep. "Greg. Can I come over?"

House sounded surprised but agreeable. "Sure."

"Great. I'll be there in ten minutes."

* * *

Horatio leaned his forehead lightly against the door and knocked softly before gripping the back of his neck with his hand. His muscles were tense, and it was only half past six, but he was tired. The door opened, and he looked up into blue eyes. "Greg."

House appraised him and delivered the verdict frankly. "You look like hell."

"That's how I feel."

"Coffee?"

Horatio shut the door behind himself and took a seat on the same bar stool he'd occupied the day before. "Yes, coffee would be nice." He slid off his sunglasses and leaned his forehead into his hands.

"Long day?"

"Something like that." Horatio didn't volunteer any information. He didn't know how to. How was he supposed to explain that his shoulders were tight because he'd been thinking about House all day? He couldn't even justify it to himself. "How was your day?"

House snorted, and the sudden smell of coffee made Horatio open his eyes to see a cup of it in front of him. "I took some pills and slept. Then I woke up. Then I took some more pills and slept a little more. Then you called. Not a bad day, in the scheme of things." He sat down on a stool on the other side of the counter and wrapped his hands around the cup. "I'm out of coffee," he explained. "Only had enough for one cup, so...I guess we're sharing."

"That's fine," Horatio said, his voice sounding a little too dry for his liking, and cleared his throat. "What kind of doctor are you?"

"What _kinds_ would be the more accurate question," House replied. "I'm a diagnostician with a double specialty of infectious disease and nephrology."

The word 'nephrology' wandered through Horatio's mind in search of something to connect with. "Kidneys."

"Yep, kidneys." House took a sip of the coffee and promptly winced. "Way too hot."

Horatio looked into the strangely spellbinding blue eyes with no idea what to say. He settled for chewing meditatively on a thumbnail and directing his gaze back down into the coffee.

Fingers settled on his wrist. "Hey."

Horatio glanced up, unsettled by the touch. "Hmm?"

House gently pulled Horatio's hand from his mouth. "Don't bite your fingernails. Bad for your health and your teeth."

Horatio looked at House's hand, which was still holding his. "Greg -"

"I'm not psychic," House said intently, leaning forward across the counter until their heads were almost touching. "You have to tell me what you want. Do you want purely platonic friendship, a listening ear, a civil union, a quick climb up Mount Gregory? I'm going to need something to go on."

Horatio's mind flooded. He didn't know what to think or say. He could barely move. He turned his wrist and gripped House's hand. "I want something beautiful," he said quietly. "Something real. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be right. Someone to hold." House was opening his mouth to say something, but Horatio held up his free hand and finished softly, "Everybody needs somebody."

"I don't know if I'm any good for anyone," House said straightforwardly. "I can be a righteous pain in the ass."

"That doesn't mean you don't deserve to be happy."

"You think you can do that?" House tilted his head and eyed Horatio shrewdly in a way that made the blood rush to his face. "You think we can make each other happy?"

Horatio searched for the words to rectify the huge mistake he'd just made. "We're both searching for something. Maybe we can find what we need in each other. Look, I don't know. Forget it. Forget I said anything."

"Would you shut up and listen?" House yanked Horatio's hand back when he tried to move it. "What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm willing to give it a shot."

Horatio was so taken aback he didn't move for a few moments. "You are?"

"I know we've only known each other for two days, but...yeah. Why not?"

Horatio stared at House. Slowly, like a man in a dream, he reached out and touched House's face, fingers sliding down the tortuous curve of one cheekbone. "This is crazy."

House smirked. "Why be sane?" he whispered, leaning forward. He might as well have leapt into Horatio's lap, so much did Horatio notice the invasion of space. "Sanity is overrated."

"I'll second that," Horatio murmured, and then their mouths collided in a sweet, awkward kiss that set off fireworks behind his eyelids. His fingers searched the soft hair at the base of House's head, and only the edge of the counter digging into his chest reminded him of their uncomfortable position. "Greg."

House opened his eyes and made a noise of irritation. "Couch."

Horatio sat obediently on the couch, and his breath caught as House slid onto his lap, one hand on his thigh like he was in pain. "You all right?" Horatio asked, carefully adjusting his position so that it made things easier for the other man.

"I'll be fine," House grunted, and then his hands were in Horatio's hair, tilting his head upward. "Am I too heavy?"

Too heavy? Horatio couldn't remember when he'd felt more comfortable. "No," he said. "You're fine." He rested his hands on House's waist, ran one down to the right thigh. "Where is it?"

House stiffened ever so slightly. "Here," he said, and laid his hand on Horatio's, shifting it until Horatio could feel an irregularity in the muscle through the aged denim. "Part of the quadriceps muscle died, so we had to remove it. A lot more could have been done if they'd made the right diagnosis - or if I had - but the only symptom was pain. Not many people get to experience muscle death."

Horatio pressed lightly with his fingertips, exploring the area. He had never experienced muscle death himself, but he thought he could nonetheless imagine how much pain House was in. "I was stabbed once," he said softly. "Ten years ago. It was pretty bad."

"Well, fair's fair." House raised an eyebrow. "You know where mine are. Where are yours?"

Horatio bit his lip. Showing his scars was not something to which he ever looked forward. Ten years might have passed, but he didn't like them any more than he had when they were still gaping wounds. He took House's hand in his and moved it to the lower left side of his chest, where he manipulated House's fingertips until they slid over the first of the two raised scars.

House's face closed in concentration as he touched the scars through Horatio's shirt. "This was a big knife. The scars are wide."

"It was a combat knife."

* * *

House looked up at Horatio. The man's face was unreadable. "A combat knife," he repeated. "You were stabbed twice with a combat knife. And you lived?"

"Barely." Horatio shifted a little, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. "I only bled for about five minutes before someone got the paramedics. It could have been worse."

House shook his head. "You're a walking miracle." He paused for a moment, weighing the words he was about to say. "I want to see them."

Horatio's eyes rested on him. "Show me yours, I'll show you mine."

House smiled slightly. "You take off your shirt, then I'll take off my pants." He watched in amusement as the lieutenant's face turned a colour that did not at all go with his hair. "Come on," he said, and heaved himself up off of Horatio, falling into the couch next to him. "We'll have a pissing match as to whose are cooler."

Horatio stood up, hands on hips, and walked to the end of the living room, looking out through the glass at the darkening city beneath them. "Okay," he said, and turned back to House. With a graceful shrug of his shoulders he slipped out of the jacket, and tossed it onto the couch. Fingers rose to the first button of his shirt, and that was when House pushed himself to his feet.

"I'll do it," he said, moving towards the man. He brushed Horatio's fingers aside and set to unbuttoning the shirt himself. Every inch of skin revealed looked to be both perfectly smooth and heavily freckled. Once the shirt was unbuttoned, House pulled it out of Horatio's pants and drew back the left side. "Ooh."

The first scar was positioned between the seventh and eighth ribs. It was clean; the knife had been driven straight in and pulled straight out without complication. House reasoned that Horatio had probably been too stunned to react. The strike would surely have punctured the lung, which would no doubt have led to all sorts of wonderful medical things.

"Pneumothorax," House murmured, tracing the scar with his finger, and shifted his hand upwards until he laid it flat in the middle of Horatio's chest. "Hemothorax." He slid his hand around, feeling along Horatio's side until his fingers brushed a small scar beneath his arm. "Chest tube."

The second scar was lower, and more ragged than the first. Either Horatio had been fighting, or his assailant had become desperate to kill him. House pressed his hand to the scar. "This would have penetrated the splenic flexure of your colon." He glanced up at Horatio, who stared back blankly. "It must've hurt like a bitch," House clarified.

"It did." Horatio gave a half-smile. "I forgot for a moment that you're a doctor."

"Did you know I was shot?" House turned his head and fingered the small scar on the right side of his neck. "One here, that severed the jugular..." He pulled up his T-shirt to reveal the matching scar on his abdomen. "...and this one. Pierced the stomach, nicked the bowel, lodged in a posterior rib."

"I think you win."

House smiled despite himself. "You haven't seen the fun one." He started unbuckling his belt. Horatio looked mildly surprised but said nothing right up until House pushed his jeans down to his knees. The expression he saw on Horatio's face was priceless and exactly what he'd been expecting.

"Greg..."

House glanced down and followed the edges of the large, dented scar with one fingertip. "I vaguely remember a thigh muscle being here," he said lightly. "But then, it was so long ago I could be wrong."

"How long ago?"

House didn't miss how transfixed Horatio's eyes were. "Six and a half years. Seven in November." He pulled his jeans back up. "Not too nice, is it?"

"Were you like this before your leg?" Horatio asked him.

House thought he would have felt irritated by the question, but instead he didn't mind at all. "Pretty much." He took a step that closed the distance between them and reached out to put his hands on Horatio's hips as though he were steadying himself. "Were you like this before the stabbing?"

"Pretty much." The redhead's voice was soft. "It's a long story."

"And one day there will be a time for it, but that time is not now." House moved his hands so that they rested on the warm skin of Horatio's waist, and took another step forward that brought him to only inches away. He could feel the heat radiating from the other man's body.

House didn't know entirely what he was intending to do, but he figured that the best thing for it was probably just to go with the flow. And the flow led him to slide his arms around Horatio and pull him close. Horatio was stiff, but only for a moment. His body relaxed, and he leaned into the embrace, his forehead coming down on House's shoulder.

House leaned his cheek against Horatio's hair and inhaled. The subtle, comfortable scent of his cologne drifted up to his nose, mingled with the light tang of sweat. House tightened his grip ever so slightly. He hadn't felt this kind of simple contentment in a long time, and he didn't know when he was going to feel it again.

Horatio lifted his head and his hands rose to House's face, cradling it. "I should go," he whispered.

"Bullshit," House growled, linking his fingers behind Horatio's back. "You're staying here tonight. You're in no shape to be alone."

One eyebrow arched. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Neither of us is in any shape to be alone. Ever. So maybe it's about time we listened to the little voice in our heads telling us to get out there and get a life, hmm?" House put his nose against Horatio's. "You. Are. Not. Leaving."

Dark blue eyes looked back into his with curiosity and no small measure of amusement. "Fine. I'm not leaving. But that means you make us dinner."

"If that's what it takes." House pulled back, eyed Horatio up and down. "Pasta?"

"Pasta sounds great."

* * *

Horatio, drinking the rest of the cold coffee, studied House's face carefully and thought to himself that the man had no idea how beautiful he was. And he _was_ beautiful; his face was gaunt and vulnerable and tender and sweet and strangely haunted. Horatio wanted nothing more than to smooth the creases from the wide brow with his fingertips, to trace the contours of the jaw. But he knew better than to push his luck. He was already getting dinner.

House wiped his hands on a towel and tossed it onto the counter. "That should be ready in ten minutes. I have a bottle of wine chilling..." He raised his eyebrows in a questioning way.

"Sure." Horatio smiled. "Do you always keep wine in the refrigerator in the hopes that some nubile young thing will accidentally stumble through your door?"

House rolled his eyes. "You are _not_ a nubile young thing."

"Well, you were at Edge. It has a young crowd. You tell me."

"Teenagers are nice. Pretty to look at, delightful to hold, but unfortunately they have a nasty way of either getting too emotionally attached or doing the reverse. Young people also come with a blinding proliferation of STDs that I have no earthly desire to contract." House pulled up a stool. "Elderly gentlemen like yourself have a significantly smaller risk of having AIDS or some other such fun thing."

Horatio snorted despite himself. "How old are you?"

"Forty-five. You?"

"Forty-eight."

"See? My point exactly." House folded his arms across his chest and did a wonderful job of looking smug. Horatio had to wonder how many tries in front of a mirror it had taken to perfect that expression. "Oh, do you have any objection to cheddar on the sauce? I wasn't exactly expecting to play chef."

"Cheddar is fine." Horatio drained the coffee and set the cup on the counter. "What?"

"You look happy."

"I apologize."

House smothered a laugh. "Why are you happy?"

"I'm basking in the glow of your wonderful presence," Horatio replied mildly, unsettled by the fact that that was absolutely the truth.

"Okay, Lieutenant Wise-Ass. I get it, I get it." House gave an evil grin as he turned to the stove. God, the man was unpredictable. Horatio thought he was definitely a little frightened of this one. "You like me."

He'd come this far. Why not stick his neck out all the way? What did he have to lose - except pretty much everything? "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

"Well, you're in luck." House unceremoniously dumped the pasta into a colander, and glanced back at Horatio, steam rising around his face. "I like you too."

Horatio bit down on his tongue to stop himself from reacting inanely. "I think you burned the pasta."

House's features twisted themselves into a caricature of alarm. He had the most expressive face Horatio had ever seen. "Oh my God, I burned the pasta," he said in the dry, toneless voice of a bored telemarketer. "What are we going to do. Oh, wait, I know. We'll just have the sauce." And just as abruptly, his face changed again, his eyebrows shooting up. "Oh _shit_."

So that was what was burning. Horatio edged around the counter and peered into the pan. Yep, there was definitely some charring tomato sauce going on. House cursed and thrust the pan into the sink, turning the water on full blast and sending steam throughout the kitchen. He turned, leaning casually against the counter, and suggested nonchalantly, "Macaroni and cheese?"

Horatio laughed. It felt like the first time in years. "Next time I cook."

"Deal," House vowed, and went to the fridge to get the cheese.

* * *

Dinner was an informal affair, the two of them on the couch with bowls of macaroni and cheese and matching glasses of white wine. The television was muted, and periodically Horatio would glance at it and raise his eyebrows. "Is that porn?" he had asked once.

"Just as good," House had replied happily. "It's 'The L Word'. I always watch it on mute."

And Horatio had not asked again.

House watched the light from the television flicker patterns on Horatio's face and glow in his red hair. "Irish, obviously," he said.

"Half and half."

"What's the other half?"

"Italian." Horatio smiled. "I know, I know..."

"What part of you is Italian, exactly?" House squinted at him. With that colouring, House would have bet a good chunk of his paycheck that Horatio had not a speck of anything but leprechaun in him. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"My father was Italian. His name was originally Cannavaro, but he anglicized it to Caine. My mother was Irish."

"Only child?"

"Yes. You?"

"Yep." House shifted in discomfort. He didn't like to talk about his childhood. Instead, he took a sip of the wine, knowing it probably wouldn't react well with all the Vicodin he was taking and not caring. He stretched his leg out carefully, and swung it up onto the couch. His foot landed squarely in Horatio's lap.

An eyebrow arched in his direction. "Yes?"

"My leg cramps being tensed all the time," House said. "I just need to stretch it." Horatio's eyebrow descended slowly, and he resumed eating without further comment. House smirked to himself. "So how was your day?"

"Not while we're eating."

House whistled. "That bad, huh?"

Horatio set aside the empty bowl and adjusted his position so that his torso more or less faced House. "We got a floater. She'd been in the water about thirty-six hours, been dead for forty-eight. COD was blunt force trauma to the head. We ID'd her by DNA. That amount of time in the water, she could have been anyone, and dental records weren't any help because she didn't have a whole lot of teeth left." He paused for breath. "Her father did it when he discovered the girl was seeing a black guy."

House blinked. He didn't know what to say. "What did you do?"

"Once I got the confession, I told them to book the son of a bitch." Horatio shook his head. "It's a crazy world. Your average citizen has no idea how it is and what we protect them from."

"Horatio Caine, avenging angel," House mused. "It does have a ring to it." He winced as the dull throbbing in his leg turned into sharper pain, and began massaging it. "What time is it?"

Horatio checked his watch. "After eleven. I have work tomorrow."

"Yeah." House retracted his leg from off of Horatio's lap and got to his feet. His thigh didn't feel any better for the vertical position. "Are we okay with splitting the bed or are you going to insist on the pull-out?"

House thought he saw a slight blush. "I learned to share."

"Good boy." House limped into the bathroom and dug around for the small toothbrush the hotel provided. He always brought his own. He turned and saw Horatio wandering around the bedroom, touching the bedspread, running his fingers over the bristles of the hairbrush House always walked with but never used. He smiled to himself and tossed the toothbrush onto the bed. "Here. That's yours."

They took turns brushing teeth, and House swapped his jeans for soft flannel pajama pants. "I have more of these, if you want," he said, emerging from the bathroom. "And a T-shirt. You wouldn't want to sleep in that."

"I had no intention of sleeping in this," Horatio said casually. "And sure, there's absolutely nothing fundamentally wrong with sleeping in your clothes."

"Of course not." House began to ferret through his bag. His clothes weren't exactly packed neatly, but eventually he managed to extricate a worn old T-shirt and a pair of pants like the ones he was wearing. "Here. Get changed. I'm going to sleep."

* * *

Horatio opened his eyes at exactly five o'clock and found himself in an interesting position. He was on his back, as he always slept, and House was curled next to him, one hand with a death grip on a fistful of Horatio's T-shirt. House's head was buried in his side, and he was making a soft continuous growling noise that seemed to be his version of snoring.

Experimentally, Horatio brought his hand down on House's head. No movement to indicate that he had stirred. He stroked House's hair. Here was a fragile man who seemed intent on denying his vulnerability all the while proclaiming to the world that he was a broken thing. A paradox, thought Horatio. A beautiful contradiction.

Horatio let his fingers drift down the side of House's face. Perhaps this was a bad idea, perhaps it was the stupidest thing he'd done in a long, long time, but...he was in love. He was in love with House.

"I have to go," he whispered. Getting no response, he sat up and tried to pry House's fingers from his shirt, an effort which failed miserably. House grunted, shifted, slapped Horatio's hand away and then put his head on his thigh.

Horatio chuckled. "You're not sleeping, are you?"

One blue eye opened. "What gave me away?"

"Sleeping people don't slap." Horatio gave his shirt an experimental tug. House still downright refused to let it go. "Believe it or not, I have to go to work."

"Who said I wanted you here?" An eyebrow rose. "I'm holding onto the shirt, not you."

Horatio sighed and lay flat on the bed. He was too tired to argue, and besides, he hadn't convinced himself that he could win an argument with House. He didn't think there was anyone who could.

House propped himself up on one elbow, looking inordinately smug. "Now that that's settled." He edged closer to Horatio, draped an arm over him and laid his head on his chest.

Horatio could not help but stare. "What are you doing?"

"Listening to your heartbeat," came the answer. "Which sounds good, except of course for the fact that it's way too fast for a man who just woke up from sleep."

Horatio searched for an answer that did not involve having to explain having a physiological reaction to House's proximity. "I need to get to work," he finally said. "I'm worried I'll be late."

House gave a wonderful snort. "Not bad."

"Can't blame a guy for trying." Horatio rested his hand on House's head, fingers feeling through the hair to rub gently against his scalp.

"That's nice."

"What?"

"The perfect alignment of Jupiter and Mars. What you're doing with your hand, you idiot."

Horatio smiled despite himself. "Ah."

"Crap. Did I just give you some sort of key to unraveling my entire personality?" House rolled on top of Horatio and placed his chin on Horatio's chest. The position somehow seemed to clarify a lot of things to Horatio's mind. House as blanket, House as protector, House as child desperately seeking something he didn't know how to ask for. Horatio thought his heart would break.

"We probably shouldn't get too involved," he said reluctantly. "You're going to go back to New Jersey in less than two weeks."

Something flickered behind House's eyes. "And?"

"And I'll be here. And you'll be there."

House's face tightened. "Yeah. Story of my life." He got off of Horatio and sat down hard at the edge of the bed, one hand on his thigh with a muffled curse. Hissing breath and the stiff posture of House's back told Horatio that he was in pain. A lot of pain.

Horatio sat up and laid both hands on House's shoulders. "Greg. It's not that I don't care. Believe me, I do. More than you have any idea. But the distance...look, if you want to try, I'm up for it. I'm just saying it's not going to be easy."

"You think anything with me is ever easy?" House was kneading his thigh forcefully. His voice was bitter. "It's not like I have anyone else offering themselves to me. I want sex, I get a hooker. Those are all my options right there."

Horatio had so many possible things to say that nothing came out. He gathered House in his arms, cradling him, back against chest, and lightly kissed his neck. He was warm, and had a salty, masculine smell that Horatio could only define as Housian. "I care about you," he said quietly into House's hair. "I'm willing if you are."

House was still. "What if I'm not worth it?" he asked at last.

Horatio touched his lips to House's stubbled cheek. "Never gonna happen."

Slowly, as though it were against his will, House gave a lopsided smile. "Okay." He turned his head and kissed Horatio softly on the mouth. "Thank you."

Horatio was blindsided, once by the kiss and again by the gratitude. "I still need to go to work," he pointed out. "That hasn't changed."

House rolled his eyes and twisted his way out of the embrace. "Come on," he said, pushing to his feet. "Get your clothes on. I'll make breakfast."

* * *

House put together a toasted cheese sandwich, and Horatio ate it on his feet in front of the mirror while House buttoned his shirt for him. He wondered what kind of flak Horatio would get if he went in late, and decided he probably didn't want to know. Horatio brushed his own hair (House had never been any good at that whole hair brushing thing), checked his reflection in the mirror and was halfway out the door before he remembered to say goodbye.

House was leaning against the doorframe. He raised an eyebrow. "Going somewhere?"

Horatio flushed an entertaining shade of fuchsia. "I may have forgotten something." One arm snaked around House's waist, and he was pulled against Horatio's sleep-warm body. A heartstopping kiss followed, and a barely audible thank you was whispered into his mouth.

House touched Horatio's face. "You're welcome."

"I'll call you," came the reply, and Horatio was off down the corridor again.

* * *

The rest of the next two weeks passed in a blur. Horatio was never sure whether he was coming or going, dreaming or awake. It seemed that House's flawed psyche was the perfect foil for his unshakeable calm, and it was more than that too. They didn't just complement each other; they completed each other. Horatio couldn't believe he was just going to have to leave all that behind when House left for New Jersey.

He didn't for a moment think that House was going to have it any easier. He didn't need verbal expressions of love to know that emotions were involved. House may have been trying to deny it to himself, but Horatio knew better. He wasn't on a one-way street. Nobody was that good, not even House.

House took one last look around his hotel room and dialed the number that came so easily to his fingertips. "Horatio?"

"I'm outside. Hang on a moment, I'll come up and give you a hand."

House glanced down at his one bag and tried not to laugh. "Okay, the bag's big, but really. I can manage one bag. There's an elevator. I'll see you in the lobby."

The elevator ride down was short, and he found Horatio waiting in the lobby, dressed as per usual in all black. House couldn't help but smile. "Do you own any other colour?"

Horatio tilted his head and regarded House over his sunglasses. "Do you want help with that bag or not?"

House held out the bag and managed to keep his mouth shut all the way to the door. "Seriously, what is your obsession with black?" he asked, holding it open for Horatio. "I've never seen you wear anything else. In fact, it might even be the same suit and the same shirt for all I know. Do you at least wash your clothes?"

"It might surprise you, but I actually bathe as well." Horatio heaved the bag onto the backseat floor of the Hummer. "When was the last time you brushed your hair?"

"What does brushing hair have to do with hygiene?" House asked quizzically as he got into the passenger seat. "I wash it, that should be good enough. Anyway, can we not spend our last hour together discussing our respective states of cleanliness?"

Horatio smiled. "You make a compelling argument."

House watched Miami glide by through the window and waited until he felt a long enough period of time had passed for him to ask the question. "Horatio," he said. His throat felt like there was gravel in it. So this was what nervousness felt like. He pushed the feeling aside, keeping his eyes fixed on the passing view. "Have you ever thought of coming to New Jersey?"

There was an excruciating silence. Then Horatio replied quietly, "Yes."

House looked at him. "You gonna keep me in suspense?"

The question was answered with a question. "How often can you come to Miami?"

"Not often. Twice a year at best, and not even that guaranteed. I get days off one at a time. Being head of diagnostics...it's a full-time job. I have to be there to ensure my team doesn't kill anyone in my absence."

"You say that as though they're allowed to kill someone in your presence."

House cracked a smile. "They try."

"I have no problems with coming to New Jersey. But our jobs have similar responsibilities, so I can't do it any more often than you can. So, as I said...things are going to be difficult."

"What about something more permanent?" House raised an eyebrow at Horatio's expression. "What? I'm curious. Since I'm not a cat, that's not dangerous."

"I don't think that metaphor was actually designed to warn cats." His tone was light, but House noticed Horatio's grip tighten on the steering wheel. "I've considered that too. That's a tricky one. I have a life in Miami, a job that's very important to me. You have the same thing in New Jersey. For either of us to transplant ourselves...that's going to take something major."

"_This_ could be major," House pointed out.

"I was talking about exclusive commitment."

House winced inwardly at the choice of words, but he knew and understood the concept very well indeed. He could do exclusive commitment. He wasn't Wilson.

"Give it a few months. I'm not scared of commitment."

"Neither am I," Horatio said softly. "Neither am I.

* * *

Horatio walked with House to the checkpoint, which was as far as he could go, and handed over the bag. House stood there in silence, just looking at him, and dropped the bag on the floor. "Come with me."

Horatio's eyebrows shot up. "What?"

House caught his hand. "Come with me. Come to New Jersey. Come on, it'll be fun."

"Greg..." Horatio took hold of House's shoulders. "You know I can't do that."

"Yeah." House sighed. "I figured it might have been worth a shot. Look...for what it's worth...I wish I didn't have to go. I wish you could come. I wish that for once in my life something nice could happen that didn't involve the use of psychotropic drugs."

"It will," Horatio said. "Like you said, give it a few months. We'll see how things go. And maybe...who knows? Maybe something will happen. I'll get a post in New York, you'll find a hospital in Miami." He paused. "I just...I don't want you to leave without knowing how I feel."

House gave a sad smile. "I do," he said gently. "I do know how you feel. And I'm trusting that you know I feel the same way."

Horatio's breath caught. "I do." He swallowed. His chest tightened until he thought his ribs would break. "So this is goodbye."

"It had better be, or I'm going to miss the plane." Without further ado, House leaned into Horatio and hugged him tight. Horatio clenched his hands in House's shirt, biting his tongue and feeling the sting of tears in his eyes. "Dammit. I'm actually going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you too." Horatio turned his head a little and swiftly kissed House's temple before pulling back. "Now go before you miss your flight."

The blue eyes locked with his. House's face was grave, almost pained. "Okay," he said, and nodded. "Goodbye, Horatio." One last searching look, and he turned, cane digging into the ground as he disappeared through the metal detector.

"I love you," Horatio whispered, but House was already gone.


	4. Chapter 4

House headed into the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital without calling anyone to say he was back. A warning wasn't the usual way he did things, and besides, he wanted to take everyone by surprise and see what sort of shenanigans they'd gotten up to in his absence.

"House," Cuddy said in a tone that indicated mild annoyance at his return. "Glad to have you back. How was your vacation? Six clinic hours this week."

Wilson was more welcoming. "You look good. Miami's done something for you. Not sure what yet, though. I'll let you know. By the way, is that a tan?"

Foreman nodded a greeting and held out a file. "Patient came in this morning. Twenty year old male, presented with night terrors, double vision, myoclonic jerk. We started on the whiteboard."

"What do you have so far?" House enquired, flipping through the file.

"Nothing but the symptoms," Foreman said reluctantly. "You want to help out or are you still recovering from Miami fever?"

House quirked an eyebrow. "Jealousy does not become you." He swung open the glass door. "What did I miss?"

Cameron stood up. "Twenty year old male presented with -"

"Oh, never mind, I heard." House perched on the edge of his desk. "Differential diagnosis?"

"Brain tumour," Foreman said, predictably.

Chase looked irritated. Clearly they had had some previous discussion about the probability of it being a brain tumour. "It doesn't necessarily have to be that bad. If you exclude the night terrors, it could be something systemic - his liver, his kidneys, something outside the brain."

House snorted. "Yes, Chase, feel free to exclude any symptom if it makes your job easier."

"Do _you_ think it's a tumour?" Chase asked defiantly.

"I want to know what you think."

Foreman looked amused. "You don't know, do you?"

House gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to pop a Vicodin. "Why are we talking about what I know?"

"Because you're the one with twenty years of medical experience and a kid turns up with neurological symptoms and you don't think it's a tumour." Foreman raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't say it wasn't a tumour. I didn't say it was one either." House was beginning to get a headache. "Right now I want a differential diagnosis from you three. I'm not here to tell you what to think."

"Really?" Chase looked confused. "When did that change?"

Foreman ignored him. "Your argument is specious," he told House.

House was ready. "Your tie is ugly."

Cameron edged her way in between them. "What about sex?"

"It could get difficult," House said. "I mean, we work together, and there's a pretty big age difference..."

"I mean he could have neurosyphilis," she interrupted.

House winked. "Nice save."

"He doesn't have a girlfriend," Chase pointed out.

Cameron said, "He had a threesome once with his brother and his brother's wife."

House stared. And he wasn't the only one. "Come again?" he asked. "You know this how?"

"I thought it might have been neurosyphilis so I took a sexual history," she said defensively.

Chase seemed stuck on the obvious. "A threesome?"

"The brother arranged it for himself and his wife, for their anniversary," explained Cameron, who was apparently just a veritable fountain of information on strange topics. "I mean, Daniel is really cute, and if you ask me, as long as two people really trust each other, a threesome once every seven years might actually help a marriage."

"Okay, I vote we stop the DDX and discuss that comment," House said at once. Chase goggled his agreement. Cameron looked slightly put out.

"Are we forgetting that all the STD tests came back clear?" Foreman wanted to know.

House facepalmed. "Foreman!"

"Oh, pardon me for trying to concentrate on something frivolous like saving a life." The neurologist threw up his hands and picked up a marker. "Okay. Seriously, now. Who says brain tumour?"

There was silence.

"All right, all right." House took the marker and began tapping a rhythm on the edge of the desk. "It's not a brain tumour. Anybody else have any other ideas?" There was silence. "He did get hit with a bullet a couple of years ago. Just mentioning."

Cameron turned in surprise. "He was shot?"

"No, somebody threw it at him." House changed the rhythm of the tapping. "I see nobody here felt the need to thoroughly read the patient's medical history. Anybody see the value in doing a CT scan?"

"How would we get that out?" Cameron asked. "If the surgeons couldn't do it then, why would we be able to do it now?"

"Because we're cool." House clapped his hands together. "Okay, kids. Class is over. Do the scan. If a bullet or a bullet fragment is there, I want to see it."

* * *

Wilson entered the office without knocking and wasted no time. "House, how many Vicodin have you taken for the day?" He shot out a hand and grabbed the pill bottle from the desk.

House jerked. "Give that back!"

Wilson was turning the bottle in his hand, reading the label. "This was prescribed two weeks ago. Judging from how much is left..." He shook the bottle, which rattled heavily. "...that would make...let me see..."

House did his best job of glowering. "Wilson..."

"My God, you're taking almost two-thirds of what you were taking a month ago!"

House got up, leaned across the table and grabbed the bottle out of Wilson's hand. "You tell Cuddy and I'll kill you. If anyone asks, tell them I doubled my dosage. Tripled!"

Wilson tilted his head, somehow managing to look incredibly dashing. "House...you're not the same. You haven't been the same since you got back from Miami three days ago. Are you...are you in love?"

House grunted, sat back down and waved a hand in Wilson's general direction. Which, in Wilson's book, was clearly an expression of denial.

"House, seriously. You have to tell me sometime."

"No, I don't have to tell you. You want me to tell you." House leaned back in his chair, picked up three balls from his desk and started juggling. "And as the great philosopher Jagger once said, you can't always get what you want."

"But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."

House abruptly ignored the balls and two fell to the ground. "What is that supposed to mean?" Wilson ignored him completely and kept walking. "Wilson? Wilson!" The last ball went soaring through the air and beaned Wilson in the back of the head. The oncologist didn't react, just chuckled as he left.

* * *

"CT scan results are back," Chase reported. "Our boy has a bullet fragment in his brain, just like we thought."

Foreman shook his head. "It's in an impossible place. There's no way we could do surgery to get that out."

House tightened his hands on the handle of his cane and pondered. If surgery wasn't possible, there had to be another way. "Okay. You three go home. There's nothing more you can do tonight."

"But," Cameron began, and maybe there was a good ending to the interjection, but House never got to hear it because he interrupted:

"It's two o'clock in the morning. Go home."

Reluctantly, the ducklings obeyed. House, however, picked up the phone.

* * *

Horatio opened his eyes and squinted blearily into the darkness. The ringing continued, which meant he hadn't been dreaming. He groped around on the bedside table and managed to find his cell phone. "Horatio."

"I'm sorry, were you sleeping?"

Horatio couldn't help but smile. "That's what most people do at two in the morning." He lay back in the bed, closed his eyes. "What's up?"

"I need to brainstorm. Probably called the wrong person, but hey, right now I'll take what I can get. I need a way to remove a bullet from someone without doing surgery."

Horatio laughed softly. What a question to ask a forensic analyst. "Wow. Not asking for much, are you?"

"Yeah, well..." House trailed off, and sighed. "I got a bullet lodged in an sensitive area of the brain. Surgery's not an option, the guy'd probably end up a vegetable. But the bullet has to come out."

Horatio tried to think. His mind was fuzzy. "A bullet's metal."

"Damn, you're good."

"No, I mean...it'd respond to a magnet. Get a big magnet, put it by his head." Silence followed this. "Look, Greg, I'm not a doctor. I apologize if that was an idiotic statement."

"Actually," House said slowly, "that wasn't idiotic at all. That was brilliant. I have an idea, and I will give you full credit for it if it works. If. Big if."

Horatio sat up. "What are you talking about?"

House told him.

* * *

Cuddy looked up expectantly as House barged into her office. "You have a diagnosis?"

"Bullet fragment in his brain," House answered promptly.

Cuddy blinked. "That's it? So simple?"

House seated himself insolently in a chair, left leg over an armrest. "You seem surprised."

"Yeah, well, usually your diagnosis is something more along the lines of you bursting into my office saying, 'His pancreas is exploding because his brain is on fire!'" She folded her hands on the desk. "So you're going to remove it, right?"

"Of course we are." House gave a smile that tried to be innocent and failed utterly.

"House?"

"Yes, yes, we're going to get it out. Don't you worry." He got up, wielding his cane like a weapon before he braced it against the floor. Another odd little smile, and he was gone.

* * *

Wilson folded his arms and gave House his best questioning stare. "Does Cuddy know about this?" At House's expected resultant eye roll, he sighed. "You know nobody's going to let you do it, right? Shoot a dead man? Do an MRI on his head?"

"Your point?"

"My point is that not even Chase, Cameron and Foreman are going to back you on this."

House leaned in close. "You take the big dark one, I've got the little girl, and the Aussie will run like a scared wombat if you growl a little."

Wilson tried to look exasperated and only succeeded in looking amused. "I won't tell her, but I'm not covering your ass when - not if, _when_ - this thing blows up on you."

"Great." House was pleased. "See you in court."

* * *

The morgue was cold and dark and House didn't care. He wandered around, checking toe tags to see who would be a suitable candidate for his upcoming experiment. The most promising corpse turned out to be a cancer patient. Male, twenty-five, similar height and build to Daniel Radin. It would work.

He wheeled the body to the MRI room, where Cameron, as predicted, had a fit. "You're going to _shoot_ someone?"

House loaded the gun. "Cameron, he's dead. It's not like he can feel it."

"Oh, great. So I guess you won't mind standing by the coffin at his funeral and explaining to his family why a cancer patient has a hole in his head!" She was near hysterics. "You can't do this!"

House cocked the hammer with his thumb and watched as Chase and Foreman muscled the table over so it was standing on the narrow side, with the body of the unfortunate Joshua Morrow strapped to it. "Okay, everybody out of the way."

"Have you ever fired a gun before?" Chase asked.

"Hey, maybe Foreman should do it. He probably has more experience in shooting people." House snorted. "Like I said, everybody out of the way."

His line of sight was clear. He aimed.

"Please," Cameron said softly. "Please don't do this."

"Too late," House replied, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

"The position of the bullet and its trajectory through his head looks almost identical to that of Daniel Radin," Foreman reported after a cursory examination of the unfortunate Joshua Morrow's head. "What now?"

"Now," House said, "we do an MRI. Chase and Foreman, get him in there."

Cameron grabbed his arm. "This is crazy," she said, almost in tears. "I can't...I can't just stand here and watch you do this."

"There's a chair outside." House nodded to the door. "I know you're going to run to Cuddy, just do me a favour and wait until this is over."

"All set," came Chase's voice.

"House," Cameron said. "Do _not_ turn that on. Please."

House modulated his voice to sound perfectly calm and rational. "You're mad because I put a bullet in his head. If this works, all I'm doing now is taking it out." He flicked the switch, and two things happened. First, the bullet flew out of the corpse and into the machine, and second, the power cut, leaving the team standing in the emergency lights.

House looked down at Chase and Foreman. "My bad."

* * *

"Well, now we know it works."

Cuddy was furious. She had all of Cameron's righteous indignation along with an unhealthy measurement of maternal frustration and some patented boss anger. "You destroyed a very expensive machine!"

"I also discovered a way to save Daniel Radin's life." Without waiting for her to comment, House ploughed on. "We make a hole in his skull over the scar, angle his head like we did with the dead guy, we put him in the MRI machine and we turn it on. Foreman took a look at Joshua Morrow's head. Damage to the brain surrounding the bullet is negligible. It came out just the way it went in. Perfectly clean."

"You _shot_ a dead man!"

"He donated his body to science. I performed a scientific experiment that we're going to use to save someone else's life. I'd say he was very useful." House paused. "Look, I know that's an expensive machine. But if you want to save Daniel, this is the only way. Going into his head is too risky. Every neurosurgeon I've consulted had said so."

"How many neurosurgeons have you consulted, exactly?"

"None," House admitted. "But Foreman said it, and I happen to agree with him. Point is, it's going to cost a lot of money to fix that machine. And it's going to cost a lot of money to fix the machine I'm going to break in the next half an hour as well. But if we _don't_ break said machine, it's going to cost Daniel his life."

Cuddy pressed her fingertips to her temples. Her hair was in disarray. Vertical lines had formed between her eyebrows. "House," she said dangerously. "If by some strange and unknowable miracle I let you do this...this piece of insanity...you owe me twenty-four clinic hours. This week alone. And I'm taking five thousand dollars out of your salary to go towards repairing that machine."

House gritted his teeth. "Fine," he said, and headed for the door. "If you need me, I'll be saving a life."

* * *

The procedure worked, which did not surprise House. Daniel was fine, with just a slight short-term memory problem that would probably clear up on its own. And House now owed Cuddy twenty-four clinic hours that he was going to immediately start paying back.

"I haven't been feeling well," the patient said. She was a young woman with long blond hair and a perpetually perplexed expression.

"So I see from your chart." House squinted. "Or I would if I could understand anything written on it? Does this say nausea?"

She shrugged. "It should."

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

She frowned. "Yes..."

"Lie down."

"I'm throwing up all the time, I'm putting on weight..." she said as he spread gel over her abdomen and started the sonogram. "My skin's cleared up nicely, though."

"You have a parasite," House said. "It's draining your nutrients, taking calcium from your bones, interfering with your hormones, making you gain weight. But don't worry, most women learn to embrace this parasite. They nurture it, feed it, dress it up in tiny clothes, even make arrangements so it can play with other parasites."

The young woman looked alarmed. "What?"

House spun the screen to show her the image. "It has your eyes."

* * *

The second clinic patient came in with a bad case of pneumonia and declared that God would save him. House took a Vicodin and felt like shoving the bottle down the man's throat.

"I don't want treatment," the patient said nervously. "I have faith."

"Look," House said. "You can have all the faith you want in spirits and the afterlife and heaven and hell, but when it comes to this world, don't be an idiot. You can tell me you put your faith in God to get you through the day, but when it's time to cross the road I know you look both ways."

The man put both hands over his face. "Am I going to die?" he asked, trembling.

House remained impassive. "You will if you don't let me treat you."

"Okay. Do it."

* * *

"Come on." House limped across his living room again, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he set the cup carefully on the coffee table. "There's a weekend coming up. Can't you ditch for two days?"

"Do you have any idea how long it takes to get from Miami to New Jersey?"

"Six hours by plane."

Horatio exhaled. "Greg..."

"Come on, Horatio." House sat on the couch. "I need to see you." He ran one hand back and forth over his head, mussing his hair even worse than it already was. His leg began to hurt. "Please."

"I'll see what I can do," Horatio said at last. "I can't promise anything."

"That's all I'm asking."

* * *

Clinic was boring. Not only was it boring, it often entailed getting up close and way too personal with people's bodies. The elderly woman on the table before him was a perfect example of this. She'd presented with all the symptoms of Crohn's, but just to make sure, he was going to have to do a colonoscopy. And shoving a camera through five feet of colon was not something he enjoyed, so he gave her instructions to follow and told her to come back in three days, when he'd hopefully have found a way to wriggle out of clinic duty.

House went on to diagnose a six-year-old girl with cat scratch fever, a preteen boy with scabies, and other random people with insignificant diseases. The most interesting case for the morning was a young couple. The man knew he had herpes, and the woman knew she had syphilis, but it turned out that the woman also had hepatitis and the man also had gonorrhea. House diagnosed chronic infidelity and left with a certain lightness in his step.

For the rest of the day, clinic was clinic. It was conjunctivitis, chicken pox, glaucoma and acute otitis media - in other words, it was mind-numbing. And then a patient was brought in with a bewildering mix of symptoms that kept them busy for most of the evening and night.

House found himself downstairs in the cafeteria. It was half past eleven and he was hungry. And they were closed, which was no concern of his. He gave the padlock a couple hard whacks with the cane and unhooked it from the grate. He was just going through the available juices when he heard a voice from behind him.

"Greg."

House's head jerked up. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the figure in black, sitting calmly at a table. Red hair glittered under the harsh fluorescent lighting. "What in the hell..."

"You called." Horatio stood, sliding his hands into his pockets. "I came."

House set the juice on the counter and tried to believe what his eyes were telling him. "You're seriously here? I'm not dreaming?"

Horatio looked around, then shook his head. "No."

House launched himself forward, wrapping his arms around Horatio as tightly as he could. He pulled back, took Horatio's face in his hands. "You have no idea how much I missed you," he said huskily, and kissed him.

Horatio returned the kiss with every ounce of barely restrained desire that House himself was feeling. "What if someone sees us?"

House leaned against Horatio, trapping him between his own body and the wall, and took hold of Horatio's jacket. "I really don't care," he whispered, and started giving slow, light kisses.

Horatio moaned, the vibrations coming through his lips, and arched his back. "Not here."

House pushed Horatio back into the wall, hard. "Not here?" he hissed. "It's been three weeks. I'm going to need something more than a hello."

"House!" Wilson was jogging through the cafeteria, looking most alarmed. "What are you doing?" He caught House's arm and pulled him back from Horatio, then turned to the redhead. "I'm so sorry, he's a little out of control. Are you all right?"

"I'm...I'm fine." Horatio did a good job of passing off his surprise as being shaken. "It's nothing, really."

Wilson furrowed his brow. "Are you a relative of a patient, Mr...?"

"No, I..." Horatio was beginning to look confused. "Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Miami-Dade Police Department." He held out his hand, and Wilson shook it with a dropped jaw. "I'm not here in my official capacity," he said hastily, then sighed. "Never mind. I should go." He took a couple of steps back, opened his mouth to say something else, then shook his head and wandered off.

Wilson turned to House. "Miami-Dade Police Department? What _did_ you get up to in Miami? And...and you just _attacked_ him!"

House wondered why Wilson's misconception seemed to surprise him. "Um...I won't do it again?"

"Yes, you will!"

"All the more reason this discussion is pointless."

"House? What happened in Miami?"

House snorted. "Long story.

Wilson folded his arms. "I have time."

"I have clinic hours," House said pointedly. "Bye now."

Wilson stared. "It's midnight."

"Hospitals don't close."

* * *

"Are you in trouble?"

"No more than I usually am." House poured himself a whiskey and sat on the arm of the couch. "I'm not complaining. I'm glad you're here."

Horatio stirred his own drink with a finger and sipped it thoughtfully. "I can't believe that worked."

"What, the MRI?" House grinned. "Well, of course it did. It was a good - if expensive - idea. Granted, I'm now minus five thousand dollars and I owe a lot of clinic hours, but hey. The kid lived, and he's going to be fine. How are your cases?"

"I want to hear about you." Horatio leaned forward and gave a flirtatious little smile. "Did you have any patients after that one?"

"Yeah, we got a kid with respiratory problems...treated him for TB, laryngitis and diphtheria before realizing he had fungal pneumonia."

Horatio raised an eyebrow. "You were treating him for multiple diseases without knowing which one he had?"

"Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks." House took a sip of his drink. "Works for spaghetti."

"Wasn't that a very big risk?"

"I take risks. Sometimes people die. But not taking risks causes more people to die, so..." House shrugged. "I guess my biggest problem is that I've been cursed with the ability to do the math."

Horatio seemed to mull this over. "At least you strike a good balance."

House tried not to laugh. "A good balance? In the last twenty-four hours, I hijacked a corpse from the morgue, shot it in the head and blew two MRI machines."

"And you saved a life," Horatio pointed out. "That's not bad for twenty-four hours."

"I have questionable ethics."

"Does that bother you?"

"Not really." House set down the glass. "I do my job, I save lives. That's what counts." He patted the cushion next to him. "Come over here, will you? I don't bite, at least not at first."

Horatio rose and sauntered over. He sank down next to House and stretched his arm out along the top of the couch. "Really? That's a shame."

House turned his head and looked directly into Horatio's eyes. "What do you want?"

Horatio laid his hand on House's arm. "I want everything," he said softly. "Everything that you can give me. I want to be with you, whatever it takes. I'm going to be here for you when you need me, Greg. All I need to know is if you're going to do the same."

House couldn't take the heat of the hand on his arm; he shifted it and linked fingers with Horatio instead. "I know that I don't actually know you all that well, given that we only met five weeks ago, and I know I should be rational and sensible and everything here. But to be totally honest with you..." House broke gaze and stared at the floor.

"Greg," Horatio said gently.

"Do you love me?" House looked back up, eyes searching Horatio's for anything. "I have to know. Do you like me, do you want me, or do you love me?"

"They're not mutually exclusive," Horatio pointed out, and then sighed. "All right. You want honesty, I'm going to give it to you. I love you. Okay? I'm in love with you. I've known that for a long time now, practically since we met. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"

House studied Horatio carefully for a moment, then reached out and put a hand behind his head, fingers curling in the hair. "I want what you want," he said at last. "I love you." Abruptly he pulled back his hand. "And you're going back to Miami in thirty-six hours. Dammit!"

Horatio reached over and took House's hand, which he placed on his own thigh. "Greg," he said softly, "I'd rather not spend thirty-six hours talking about how I'm going back to Miami and we have no time. So, if it's all right with you...can we do something a little more enjoyable?"

House gave him his best soulful look. "Let me show you the bedroom."


	5. Chapter 5

"Welcome to my lair," House said, limping through the doorway. Horatio studied the room. It was in no way sexy enough to be called a lair, but the various artifacts of House's life strewn around it - medical journals, a lacrosse stick, a motorcycle helmet, sheet music - made it oddly comforting. A pair of pajama pants lay crumpled on the bed, a Gameboy partially concealed in the folds of one leg.

Horatio noted the bottle of Vicodin on the bedside table. "You have a pain problem."

"Yes," House said. "A drug _addiction_, a pain _problem_. There's a difference."

"The drugs aren't a problem?"

"The drugs don't affect the quality of my life. The pain does." House sat down on the bed with a grimace, and used both hands to swing his leg up. He pressed his palms against his thigh, began to rub it down.

Horatio slipped off his shoes and sat down cross-legged on the bed in front of House, shifting the leg so it lay across his lap. "Tell me if it hurts," he said, and started to give House's thigh a light massage.

The doctor grunted. "Harder." Horatio dug his fingers into the muscle beneath the denim, kneading it repeatedly. A groan told him he was doing something right. "Wait, wait."

He looked up, and stilled the movement of his hands. "What?"

House moved his leg off Horatio's lap and unbuckled his belt. "I'll take these off. Be easier for you to do it properly if I'm not wearing jeans."

Horatio waited impassively - he hoped - as House lifted himself off the bed and wriggled out of his jeans. Extending from faded grey boxer briefs were long, pale legs which were nicely corded with muscle. The depressed scar on his right thigh stood out markedly, and that was where Horatio put his hands. House leaned his head back on the headboard and closed his eyes.

After a few minutes of thorough massage, Horatio's fingers began to hurt. He flexed them awkwardly, then put House's leg off his lap and stretched out on the bed next to him.

House opened his eyes. "Thank you."

"Did it help?"

"No, I'm thanking you for no reason." House slid down the bed so that he was on his side, up on one elbow, looking down into Horatio's face. "Yes, it helped." He ran a fingertip down Horatio's cheek, moved his hand to cup the other man's jaw.

Horatio pulled House's head down and there was a hot collision of lips and tongue that threatened to send both of them over the edge. House clearly knew what Horatio wanted and how to keep it from him. He shifted his weight until his body covered Horatio's, pinning him to the bed, and carefully arranged his bad leg between Horatio's. That done, he settled down to those soft, teasing kisses that were almost nothing but still more than enough to drive Horatio insane.

"Stop," Horatio whispered, aware that his voice was barely audible.

For a moment, House did. "Do you mean that?"

Horatio's body twisted impatiently. "No," he groaned, pulling House's head back down to his. How could he ask House to stop when House stopping was the thing he wanted least in the world? How could he ask for something that would make him implode with desire?

House continued from where he'd left off, covering Horatio's face with the gentle kisses, dragging his parted lips over Horatio's eyelids. His hands spread out on the redhead's chest, fingertips everywhere at once and not at all in a rush. Horatio already appreciated House's hands for their aesthetic value - they were pianist's hands, beautiful, with impossibly long, graceful fingers - but he thought he now also had an idea of how good they might be at coaxing a particular brand of music from his own body.

They stayed like that for hours, just kissing, with no wild scramble for anything more. Horatio was in heaven. He liked that House didn't push him, didn't make him nervous, didn't scare him. He liked the unconscious comfort he drew from being in House's arms. He liked that even if only for a moment, his mind didn't pull and tug at itself and review evidence and case files and autopsy reports. There was just House.

Eventually, House spooned his body against Horatio's, wrapping one arm around him and pulling him close. The sound of House's slow breathing and the feel of his heartbeat against Horatio's back made Horatio unbelievably sleepy. He felt drugged. A soft growling signaled that House had fallen asleep, and after a smile, Horatio did the same.

* * *

It was the beeping that woke them. House roused himself with a grunt and reached for the pager. Horatio blinked blearily at him in the darkness. "Who is it?" he mumbled.

House thought he'd never heard anyone sound more adorable. He turned on the lamp, recoiling from the light, and read the message. It was just a bunch of symptoms, but he could tell it was Cameron. "Nosebleed, hearing loss, conjunctivitis, petechiae. Please come." He sighed. "Dammit."

Horatio supported himself on his elbows, looking slightly more awake now. "Do you have to go?"

"Looks that way." House groaned as he sat up. "How long until you leave?"

"Tomorrow afternoon."

"Okay. I'll try to be back in a couple of hours." House rubbed his forehead distractedly. "This shouldn't take long."

"Do you know what it is?" Horatio asked.

"Wegener's granulomatosis," House responded promptly. "But I have to go examine the patient, run a couple tests...just to be sure. Cuddy - she's the hospital administrator - has not been happy with me since I wrecked her two MRI machines." He stood carefully. "You...you sleep."

Horatio smiled. "Okay."

* * *

"Differential diagnosis," House barked as soon as he entered the room.

Cameron shot to her feet, backing away and holding the folder across her chest in a defensive posture. "Um, there's also subglottal stenosis, joint pain -"

"He asked for a diagnosis, not symptoms," Foreman pointed out. He seemed to be the only one of them who had no problems being awake at four in the morning. "Vasculitis."

House cocked his head. "Why?" he fired.

Foreman looked surprised. "The stenosis. Also looks like she's got pneumonia. There's some neuropathy as well."

"He asked for a diagnosis, not symptoms," snarked Chase, who finally leaned off the wall and ran a hand back through his hair. "I think it could be something autoimmune."

"Kidneys," House said. "Did you look at her kidneys?"

"They're dying," Foreman said.

House did his best to look at them like they were idiots. "Yes, it's vasculitis. Score one for Foreman. Score another for Chase, because it is something autoimmune. Wegener's granulomatosis - did that not occur to any of you?" he asked pointedly. Cameron's mouth opened, but she seemed to realize that nothing that came out would make any sense and shut it again.

House rolled his eyes. "Foreman, check for c-ANCA's and if Cuddy wants anything more solid, Chase, do a kidney biopsy. They're dying anyway, it's not like it matters how much is left when they go. When it comes back positive, Cameron, break the news. All three of you start the treatment - corticosteroids and oral cyclophosphamide. Someone tell Cuddy I actually came in to do the diagnosis. Goodbye."

"You're leaving?" Cameron asked in disbelief.

House bit back a sharp retort. "It's four in the morning. I'll be back at nine."

* * *

Horatio rolled over as he heard House come back into the room. "That was fast."

House smirked as he kicked off his sneakers. "They're probably still wondering what hit them." He tossed the jacket over a nearby chair and crawled back into bed, jeans and all.

Horatio welcomed him, curling against House's back, one arm around his waist. He nuzzled House's neck. "Are you going to have to go back?" he murmured into soft blond hair.

"In five hours." House's voice told him the doctor was already drifting off.

"Mmkay," Horatio said, and did the same.

* * *

"Horatio," House called for the third time, towel-drying his hair. "Get up."

"I _am_ up."

"Liar." House stepped out of the bathroom and looked at Horatio sprawled on his back on the bed. "That's not up, that's awake."

Horatio threw an arm over his face in reply.

House rolled his eyes and slipped into his blazer jacket. He took his leather jacket from where it lay over the chair and clambered onto the bed. Horatio wasn't sleeping, but he was clearly trying to. House pulled his arm away from over his eyes, leaned down and kissed him. "I'm going to work," he said. "Call me."

Sleep-darkened eyes looked up at him. "Okay."

Maybe it was the rise and fall of Horatio's chest, or the warm breath on his face, but House was suddenly hit by an irresistible and completely uncharacteristic feeling of romance. "We'll go to dinner tonight," he said. "Somewhere nice. Okay?"

Horatio's lips quirked into a smile. "Okay."

* * *

House coasted the motorcycle into the parking garage and just sat there for a moment, enjoying the feel of the power between his legs. He knew it was a Freudian thing, but didn't care. He felt free on the bike. It gave him power and speed and he couldn't take his attention away from it for a moment or risk death. He liked that.

He killed the engine, unclipped his cane and made for the door. It was a brisk morning, not quite cold. Wilson was waiting for him in the lobby.

"You already have a clinic patient," the oncologist said, handing over a file. "Six year old girl. She's blue."

"What?"

"She's blue." Wilson chuckled at the look on House's face. "A very nice shade of it too."

"Okay..." House narrowed his eyes at the file. "Headache, fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness...was she blue all along or is this a recent thing?"

"Recent thing, according to her mother. The woman was so frantic I actually thought about sedating her." Wilson shook his head. "We managed to calm her down a little."

House winced. If there was one thing he hated, it was dealing with panicky patients and/or their parents. "Thanks." He opened the door of the first exam room and stopped in the doorway.

The girl was small. Very small, for a six year old. Her skinny legs dangled into space off the table. Long curls of thick reddish hair cascaded to her waist, making her head look disproportionately tiny. She did, however, have the cutest face House had ever seen. She was also very, very blue.

"Wow," House said admiringly, not entirely sure why he was being nice. "That's actually a pretty good colour for you, Katie."

The girl giggled, but her mother instantly leapt to her feet. She was a small birdlike woman with fluttering hands that never kept still. "Are you a doctor? What's wrong with her? Can you fix her?"

"Yes, I'm a doctor. I'm Dr. House. I have a very good idea what's the matter with her, and I'll tell you as soon as I get some blood." He looked at the little girl. "Are you scared of needles?"

She shook her head. "How come I'm bwoo?"

House allowed himself to smile. "Do you live on a farm, Katie?"

"Yes, we live very close to agricultural land." The mother was wringing her hands. "What's _wrong_ with her?"

"Mrs. Baker, you're going to have to calm down," House said. "You're upsetting your daughter. It's bad enough already that I'm going to have to stick a needle in her arm. Would you like to wait outside?"

"No, no..." She sank back into the chair, biting her nails.

House returned his attention to the girl as he searched for a vein at her inner elbow. "Okay, this is going to hurt a little..." The needle slipped through the skin easily, and chocolate-brown blood began to fill the syringe.

"That's funny," Katie commented. "Bud's s'posed to be wed."

The mother jumped up from the chair. "What colour is her blood?"

House manoeuvred himself so that he was blocking the mother's view of the needle. "Yes, blood's supposed to be red. If it has enough oxygen in it, it will be. Your problem is that your blood doesn't work quite right. The pesticides used on the farm have gotten into your water and poisoned your blood."

"Oh my God," the mother moaned.

House made a face at Katie, who giggled. "Am I gonna be okay?" she asked.

"Yep. We're going to have to stick another needle in your arm, though, and give you some oxygen. And you're going to need to buy bottled water." House put a plaster on the girl's arm and gave her a pat on the head before turning to the mother. "Mrs. Baker, what your daughter has is called acquired methemoglobinemia. All that means is that her haemoglobin isn't binding to oxygen properly. We're going to give her a treatment called methylene blue in her IV which is going to restore her blood to its normal state and give her some supplemental oxygen to help her along. You might want to bring your whole family in for testing, since you've all been drinking the water."

"Thank God." The woman twisted her hands together one more time. "So she's going to be okay?"

"She'll be just fine." House smiled at Katie. "I'll arrange for treatment to be started. Meanwhile, why don't you round up everyone else and bring them in?"

"You'll take care of her?" she asked nervously. "You'll make sure she's all right?"

"Mrs. Baker," House said firmly, "your daughter is in good hands."

* * *

"House!" Foreman jogged down the hall. "We got a grey man."

For a moment House had visions of Martians. "You mean argyria? God, what is it with odd-coloured people today?"

Foreman looked perplexed, but continued, "Yeah, argyria. We told him he's fine, but he won't believe us. Demands to talk to someone senior."

House groaned and resigned himself to his fate. "How did he get it in the first place?"

"He's been taking colloidal silver in small but frequent doses over the last three years."

"Then he's been grey for a long time."

"Well, he's just decided to come in for it. Says his wife won't sleep with him unless he goes back to normal and we need to fix him." Foreman shook his head. "You handle him."

House opened the door and was confronted by a man in his mid-forties with metallic silver skin. He looked like he'd been airbrushed. "You've been taking colloidal silver for how long?"

"Three years," the man replied miserably. "For, you know, my health."

"I see." House shut the door and folded his arms. "You're aware that colloidal silver hasn't been proven to have any beneficial effects whatsoever on the body, right?"

"I haven't been sick since I started taking it," came the protest.

"You're also grey," House pointed out. "I had a little blue girl a couple of minutes ago, but that wasn't due to her own stupidity. Anyway, what exactly is it that you want me to do for you? You're grey. In fact, no. You're silver. You glisten. You'd make a great decorative piece. And unfortunately, it's permanent."

"It can't be permanent!"

House sighed heavily and sat down. "Look - Homer, is it?"

"Howard."

"Okay, Howard. You ingest silver, it's deposited in the skin. It's as simple as that. You can try laser therapy or dermabrasion, but that's pretty much it. Next time you decide to try some 'alternative medicine', do a little research first."

Howard fidgeted. "But my wife -"

"Is perfectly right to be freaked out. You're silver, for Christ's sake. Anyway, it's not dangerous or fatal, but if you keep taking your witches' brew, you're going to get darker. You could turn dark grey, come close to black. So do us all a favour and take vitamins instead, okay?" House stood up and held the door open. "After you."

* * *

House looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw Chase already halfway inside the office. "You should really knock," House said pointedly. "What if I had Cameron under the desk?"

Chase looked flummoxed. "Um -"

"Never mind. What is it?"

"Patient of yours, a..." Chase checked the file. He paused, lips moving silently, and then rotated it a full one-eighty. "I think this says Yolanda Reese?"

"Name rings a bell. Female, twenties, came in for a damaged trachea she got while practicing erotic asphyxiation. Why are you reading it upside down?"

"Easier to understand this way."

"Ah."

"Well, she's back in the clinic. The patient presented with..." Chase trailed off, frowning at the sheet.

House raised an eyebrow. "The patient presented with a dramatic pause?"

"No, with a pickle jar lodged in her rectum." Chase winced.

House grinned. "Make sure and use plenty of lube." Chase threw him an utterly disgusted look and made for the door. As soon as it had shut behind him, House's phone rang. He flipped it open. "House."

"Hey."

House smiled involuntarily. "Hey yourself." He checked his watch. "Have you had lunch?"

"You mean you actually have food here somewhere?"

"Check the remarkable invention called the refrigerator," House suggested dryly, getting up. His stomach was growling. "Or do you want to come up here for lunch?"

"Would that be okay?" Horatio sounded doubtful. "I mean, it's where you work..."

"Do you have a point?"

"What I don't have is transport."

"Yeah, not like you can call a cab or anything." House edged his way into the elevator and poked the ground floor button. "No worries. I'll come for you."

"On the bike?"

"Yes, on the bike." House just managed to refrain from rolling his eyes. "You'll be fine. I'm sober. Besides, I wouldn't put your life at risk when you could arrest me for reckless riding or something."

"Okay. I'll go have a shower."

"You do that. I'll be there in about ten minutes."

"You have a date?" queried Wilson suddenly from behind him, which nearly gave House a heart attack.

"Jesus Christ!" House swore explosively, pressing a hand to his chest as he flicked the phone shut. "If you wanted to kill me, you could have just said so!"

Wilson wasn't deterred. "Again - you have a date?"

"No, I have a lunch companion." House headed out of the elevator, limping as quickly as he could.

Wilson, of course, kept up easily. "A lunch companion."

House chewed on something imaginary. "Yes."

"Do I know her?"

"You've met him."

"Is it that lieutenant from Miami?" Wilson asked. House applauded sarcastically in response. "House, seriously...what did you do?"

"Why does it always have to be my fault?" House questioned, getting carefully onto the bike, and then answered his own question. "Because it usually is. Okay, fair enough. But no, this time it was not something I did. I witnessed a crime. That's all."

"And he flew from Miami to New Jersey to talk about that?"

House clenched his jaw as he clipped his cane onto the bike. "Wilson."

"House."

"Don't you have business of your own to mind?" House gunned the engine. "A dying patient to date, perhaps?"

"House!" Wilson called, but the motorcycle was already disappearing.

* * *

Horatio was ready and dressed and out on the landing by the time House pulled up on the bike. He took a moment to admire the man, the fit of the jeans around his thighs, the leather jacket. Biker chic had never looked so good.

House pulled the helmet from his head. "You coming or you going to stand there and drool at the big powerful thing between my legs?"

Horatio smiled as he walked down the steps. "Why can't I do both?"

House handed him the helmet. "Put that on."

"What about you?"

"Of the two of us, I have more medical experience and more motorbike experience, therefore it's me we'll be listening to." House jabbed Horatio in the chest with a finger for emphasis. "Now put that on."

Horatio obeyed and swung a leg over the bike, adjusting himself so he was comfortable. It was a wonderfully intimate position, his chest pressed up tight against House's back. House's hands caught his and pulled them together in front of his chest. Horatio splayed his fingers over House's pectorals and smiled to himself.

House kicked off and accelerated, and although they weren't going fast, Horatio's grip tightened. Riding a bike was an adrenaline rush. He'd never done it before, but he thought he could get used to it. The roar of the engine, coupled with House's body in front of him, made for an interesting experience.

It was a short ride to the hospital, between five and ten minutes. House parked the bike and placed his hands over Horatio's. "You okay?"

Horatio's throat muscles weren't keen to work. "Yes." It came out a croak.

House grinned, and peeled Horatio's fingers from his chest. "You did fine." He disengaged the cane from its holder and got off the bike, putting his free hand on Horatio's shoulder. "Come on. I'll get us some food. It's nice weather, we can eat outside."

Horatio pulled up a chair and looked out across the field. The hospital had well kept grounds, and it was quiet, with just the indistinct mumbling of lunching doctors and patients for background noise.

"Hi," came a voice. Horatio looked up and saw the dark-haired doctor who had caught them in the cafeteria the day before. "Horatio Caine, right?"

"Yes." Horatio answered the smile with one of his own. The man had a pleasant, open face. This wasn't someone anybody could be angry with. "And you are?"

"Dr. James Wilson." Wilson shook his hand. "Is House all right?"

Horatio understood immediately where this was going. "He's not in trouble with the law, if that's what you mean. He was a witness to a crime."

"That doesn't explain why you'd come all the way to New Jersey."

"I can't really talk about it," Horatio said diplomatically.

"Wilson." House limped up and set two burgers and a large plate of fries on the table. "How nice to see you. Please go away."

Wilson rolled his eyes and turned to Horatio. "Well, it was nice meeting you."

"Same here." Horatio held out a hand and they shook again. He watched Wilson leave, and then turned to House. "Well, he doesn't seem at all suspicious."

House groaned as he sat down. "He's my friend. My only friend, if you want to be painfully accurate. So he's going to put it together eventually if I don't tell him." He dunked a fry in the ketchup and popped it into his mouth. "I gather you aren't keen on the latter."

Horatio sighed. "Your perceptive abilities amaze me."

House snorted and took a bite of the burger. "Look," he said through the mouthful of food, "I'm just saying it's going to come out. I don't care one way or the other. I wouldn't be here with you if I did. But I also understand your position."

Horatio doubted that very much, because even he didn't understand his position. He was in a completely different state and yet he was still skittish. "Greg -" The pager went off.

House scowled and grabbed the offending gadget with oily fingers. "Screw _you_," he muttered to it after reading the message, and put it down next to the plate.

"Do you have to go?" Horatio asked.

"I," House said severely, "am on lunch, and Cameron should know that."

"Who?"

"Member of my team. Extremely pretty. Her boyfriend's on the team too, and he - that would be Chase - is also extremely pretty. Then we have Foreman."

"Who is...not pretty?"

"Exactly. Good-looking guy, but not pretty." House jammed his fork into the plate of fries and managed to pick up six at once. "She wants me to come in because some patient has difficulty swallowing." Just then, his phone rang. "Oh Christ."

Horatio tried not to smile. "You should get that."

House gave him a dangerous look, wiped his fingers and picked up the phone. "What?" he snapped. "Yes, I know it's you. List them, fast." He paused. "Uh-huh. Hiatus hernia? Chase _would_ say that. No, do an esophageal motility study." Another pause. "Because it will show if she has achalasia, that's why. Call me when you know something."

Horatio wanted to ask what in hell he was talking about, but decided otherwise. "So isn't it against some form of regulations for Cameron and Chase to have a relationship?"

"Not really. It gets iffy when they decide to make out in closets all over the hospital, though." House's face took on a look that assured Horatio that they were indeed doing that. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "Maybe I'll blackmail them one day."

"But they're not doing anything against regulations," Horatio said reasonably.

House aimed his fork at the other man. "They're being extremely unsanitary in a hospital. I'm sure I can find some kind of code somewhere in a book that smells like mould stating that thou shalt not make out in hospital closets because thou wilt be spreading thy germs unto all people."

Horatio laughed. "You've got a way with words."

"Mm."

"Where did you say we were going for dinner?"

"I didn't." House swallowed and wiped his mouth with a napkin. "That's because I haven't decided yet. I know a nice Italian place, but that would entail dressing up. Although that would be no problem for you because that seems to be your default attire."

Horatio glanced down at his suit. "Do you have a problem with my suit?"

"Nope. You'll just need a tie."

"What colour tie do you wear with a black shirt?"

House snorted. "I hoped you'd know."

Horatio had a fry. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess."

House's phone went off again. He flicked it open without bothering to wipe his hands. "What? Well, of course it is, didn't I say so? Schedule her for a Heller myotomy. I don't care who." He listened a moment longer, then shut the phone with an irritated noise. "It's achalasia, of course."

"Of course," Horatio agreed.

House spared a moment to look slightly amused. "I'm not going to bore you with the details." He stole the last fry from the plate and used half the napkins in his bid to free his hands from grease, wiping his phone as an afterthought. "Shall I run you back home?"

Horatio winced. "Wilson might -"

"Who cares what Wilson might. I'm the one who has to work with him." House raised his eyebrows. "Come on."

Horatio sighed his surrender and stood up. "Let's go."

* * *

After he'd dropped Horatio off, House headed back to the hospital and, after ploughing through a few clinic hours, was confronted by Chase and a file. "Where's Cameron?" House asked, glancing around and only seeing Foreman. "Off saving the world? Helping another puppy in need?"

"She went home after lunch," Chase said. "She's got a cold."

"Are you taking her chicken soup and antibiotics after work like the good little boyfriend you are?" House did his best job of making googly eyes and apparently succeeded tremendously from the smirk on Foreman's face. Chase, for his part, looked like a deer caught in the world's biggest headlights.

"Moving right along." House opened the file. "So we have a thirty-three year old female presenting with headache, insomnia, mood swings, inability to concentrate, hypochondriasis. She's a single mother with a six month old child. Differential diagnosis?"

"Drugs," Foreman said promptly.

"Post-partum depression," was Chase's idea, which to House seemed to fit better. But he wasn't about to say anything.

Foreman shook his head. "_Drugs_."

Chase immediately employed his usual mixture of defensiveness and submission. "I'm just saying -"

"One of you is right," House said, seeing a way to amuse himself for a while. "Foreman, you do a tox screen. Whoever's diagnosis is correct gets a break from my insults for twenty-four hours."

"But what about -" Chase stopped. "There's no test for post-partum depression."

"Well spotted," House said. "If Foreman's wrong, you'll be right. Run along now."

"Working for you must be a dream," came Wilson's voice, and House looked up to see the oncologist standing in the doorway, one hand on his hip, as Foreman and Chase edged past him. "I mean, far be it from me to suggest that your teaching methods border on deranged."

"I'm building character," House said. "Are you a little teapot?"

For a moment Wilson's face wore the most endearing look of confusion. He looked down at his hand and quickly dropped it. "Drink?" he asked casually.

House was instantly suspicious. "You buying?"

Wilson grinned. "When am I _not_ buying?"

"No wonder you've had so many wives." House got up and followed Wilson into the corridor. Silence reigned until they were in the elevator, at which point Wilson cleared his throat.

"So how long do you think you can keep this up?"

House turned his head slowly. "What are you talking about?"

"Horatio Caine."

House's anatomy did two interesting things at the same time - his heart leapt into his throat and the bottom fell out of his stomach, which had the combined effect of making his right leg give. He clutched his cane and braced the other hand against the wall of the elevator. "Oh."

"Yes, oh." Wilson was looking at him with an infuriating mix of wisdom and amusement. "I know, House. I don't know exactly what happened in Miami, but I know there's something going on between the two of you. Something decidedly non-platonic, if your recent behaviour is any indication. How long do you think you can keep this under wraps?"

House sought refuge in sarcasm. "Hang on, let me see if I've got my crystal ball..."

"Can you be serious for two seconds?" Anxiety was now coming through in Wilson's voice. "What are you _thinking_, House?"

House dropped the pretense. "I just...I'm not used to...fuck."

"Very eloquent," Wilson said, nodding. "Do you think I could get that on a greeting card?"

"Funny." House limped out of the elevator and started for the parking garage. "Where do you want to go? Bear in mind I have a dinner appointment."

"You what?"

"Dinner appointment. I made reservations for Magaldi's."

Wilson looked stricken. "Pinch me."

House stopped. "What are you talking about?"

"Pinch me. Tell me I'm not dreaming."

House whacked him on the leg with the cane. Wilson yelped. "You're not dreaming, Wilson. I made reservations. It's a date. With a man. Is that what this is about, the man thing?"

"The 'man thing' isn't my problem." Wilson was rubbing his calf and looked like he was in actual pain. "My problem is...House, you're in a relationship? An actual relationship? You're being romantic? Reservations at an expensive Italian restaurant?"

House looked quizzical. "Remind me why this is a problem. Weren't you encouraging me to get back into the dating scene?"

"Yeah, but..." Wilson stopped by his car. "How long have you known this guy? I mean, do you know anything about him at all?"

House tried not to laugh. "Wilson, I already have a mother."

The oncologist got into his car as House straddled the motorbike. "We'll finish this conversation at the pub."

House raised his hands in mock surrender.

* * *

The pub wasn't too crowded, so House was able to stretch his leg out and prop it up on another chair. "You were saying?"

Wilson took a sip of his pint. "I was saying that I find it extremely out of character for you to be all calf-eyed over someone you've just met." House arched an eyebrow, and Wilson continued, "This is strange, even for you. Is he that good in bed?"

House choked on his beer, spitting a mouthful of it back into the glass. "What?" he spluttered, wiping his mouth. "I'm not - we haven't - Wilson!"

"When did you get together? While you were still in Miami?" At House's stare, Wilson tilted his chin knowingly. "Two weeks in Miami, three weeks since...you're telling me you're _not_ banging him?"

"No!" House brayed, not caring whether the whole pub heard. "I'm not banging him! Why are you judging me by my track record?"

"Because you judge me by mine?" Wilson shook his head and had a drink. "I don't know, House. This is just weird. I don't know what to make of you anymore. I'm kind of wishing someone would slap me and give me back the you I understood."

"I remember when life was predictable," House said dryly. "Predictable means boring, Wilson. Why can't you be happy for me?"

"I _would_ be if I had any faith in your incredible powers of kindness and compromise - both of which are absolutely essential to the success of any relationship. Let's face facts here. You're in New Jersey. He's in Miami. It is proven that long-distance relationships don't work."

"I seem to recall that fidelity is also essential to the success of a relationship," House said archly. "That seems to be a virtue you still haven't mastered."

"I loved all my wives," Wilson said.

"You were unfaithful to all your wives."

"I always told them."

"Infidelity isn't redeemed by honesty."

"That should be on a plaque somewhere." Wilson had a handful of peanuts and washed them down with the beer. "Yes, I had affairs. I had affairs when the person I was married to was right next to me every night. How do you think you can maintain something seven states apart?"

"I'm not like you," House said simply. "I was never unfaithful to Stacy. I just couldn't love her like she wanted."

Wilson asked gently, "What makes you think you can love Horatio like he wants?"

House ran his hands back and forth through his hair and debated how he was going to answer that. To tell the truth, he didn't know what made him think this was going to work. He couldn't be sure he wouldn't be a righteous pain in the ass and drive Horatio off.

"Because I do," he said at last. "I think he understands me. I think he cares enough to make this work. And he's no angel either. Horatio has his own problems."

"That you can cope with?"

House shrugged, and opened his hands. "I'm willing to try."

Wilson nodded slowly. "I think this is the most you've cared about anyone in a long time. Of course," he amended, "that doesn't mean that this will in any way work. But I'm glad you're giving it a shot."

"And..." House turned the near-empty glass in his hands. "It doesn't bother you that, you know..."

"That he's a man?" Wilson laughed softly. "House, you're as God made you."

House smiled into his beer and didn't say a word.

* * *

"Are you ready?" came the voice from the bathroom.

Horatio, who was retying his tie for the third time and thinking that the bright red did not go well with his hair, answered, "Almost."

House emerged, looking harassed and incredibly sexy in a black suit, white shirt and sky-blue tie that made his eyes look dazzling. "Oh God no," he said as soon as he laid eyes on Horatio. "Is that the only tie you could find?"

"I found a green one, but that made me look like a walking Christmas tree." Horatio finally succeeded in getting the tie right, and buttoned his jacket. He checked his reflection in the mirror. The tie made his hair look even more ridiculous than usual, but that was an occupational hazard of being a redhead.

House glanced at himself in the mirror and snorted. His clothing was immaculate, but the stubble and unbrushed hair still made him look like a mess. "Are you ready?" he asked again.

"Yes." Horatio reached up and adjusted the knot at the base of House's throat. "I'm ready."

* * *

"This is _yours_?" Horatio asked in disbelief, gaping at the Corvette. "I thought it belonged to your neighbours...especially since it was parked in front of their house."

"He's a cop," House explained, opening the passenger door before limping around to the driver's side. "I do that for security. Nice, isn't it?"

"Where did you get it?"

"Mob boss gave it to me." House glanced at Horatio. "I'm not kidding."

"How...never mind. I'm not going to ask."

House grinned as he pulled away from the curb. "Long story."

"You're forgetting I'm MDPD." Horatio's hair was tossed into wild disarray by the wind. House thought he'd never seen him look better. "Anyway, this is way out of my jurisdiction and none of my business. If you say it wasn't something I should have you in handcuffs for, I'll take your word for it."

"Handcuffs?" House raised an eyebrow. "You brought handcuffs?" Horatio apparently decided it was wiser to keep his mouth shut, and didn't answer. "I should turn this car around right now and go back home."

Horatio looked unexpectedly meek. "Um -"

"Okay, okay. I'm convinced. We'll go have dinner and _then_ we'll get around to the handcuffs." House wasn't sure whether he actually meant what he was saying or whether it just felt good to say. It didn't matter about the handcuffs. House just liked the fact that he could say it. He could be free with his words and nothing mattered but the two of them and the darkness and the wind coming over the windshield of the 'Vette.

"I'm going to look like hell when we get there," Horatio said, but he was laughing.

House gunned the engine and tore through an empty intersection. Speed was a drug. "Doesn't matter. You're amazing anyway."

By the time he pulled into a spot in front of the restaurant, they were both high on adrenaline and giggling like teenagers. House couldn't believe he was laughing over nothing more than fast driving. He reached into the backseat for his cane and was surprised when Horatio opened his door for him. "I thought I was the man in this relationship," he commented.

Horatio raised an eyebrow. "Think again."

They were greeted at the door and escorted to a table in the corner, where House ordered a bottle of something dark and sweet and settled on the veal as a main course. Horatio ignored the menu and ordered in Italian.

House stared. "Show-off."

Horatio smiled. "I'm Italian."

"You're Irish."

"I'm Irish-Italian."

"That's an oxymoron."

"What did you just call me?"

House sat back in his chair. When had Horatio gotten so playful? Hell, when had _he_ gotten so playful? Horatio had changed him...dramatically.

From the first, the redhead had struck him as a serious, intense guy with a compassionate streak that probably led him to become involved in everything he even came close to. Horatio was emotional and thoughtful and considerate. He was, House thought, the kind of man whose throat you could slit and in his one last gasping breath he'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt.

"Greg," Horatio said gently. "Zoning out isn't permitted at the table."

House took a sip of the wine. "Sorry. Were you saying something?"

"No, I -" House's phone rang. Horatio glanced at it with wearied good humour. "Go on, answer it."

House growled. "No." Horatio reached across the table, flipped the phone open and held it against House's ear. "What?" House barked into the phone, taking it from Horatio with an eye roll. "I'm at dinner. What? No, you can't! For God's sake, what do you want?" He paused. "Ataxia. That's it? Did you do the heel to shin test? Right. Whatever." He hung up.

"Cameron?" Horatio asked delicately.

House downed the rest of his wine. "Do you get calls like this? Does any person in this world get calls the way I do?"

"You're a doctor. Your expertise is essential to saving lives."

"If my team would just pay a little more attention -" House stopped and snatched his phone. "Didn't work, did it? Yes, hello. The heel to shin test. No dice, right? Do you know what that means? Of course you don't. Dysdiadochokinesia. It means he has lesions in the posterior lobe of his cerebellum, that's what. Does he have speech problems? Dysarthria? Then what he has is MS. Nice talking to you."

Horatio looked up. "If this is a bad night for you..."

House eyed him. "If you're going to suggest that we call this off, you can think again. But you know what, I have a better idea." He got up and picked up the bottle of wine. "We'll finish this at home."

* * *

Horatio unlocked the front door. House was struggling with locking the car, not dropping the wine, and keeping his cane upright. "Do you need help with that?" he called. The answering look he got was intimidating. "Just asking."

House limped up the stairs. "Don't even think about taking anything off," he warned. "We're both staying in these. Are you hungry?"

"Not really." Which was mostly true. Horatio didn't think he could take a full meal. The wine, on the other hand, looked just about right. "Where are the wine glasses?"

"Top left cupboard," House said, and then caught himself. "Christ, let me do something, will you? Do you have to be so patient and understanding and helpful?"

Horatio sat down on the couch, amused. "It's my nature. Do you have to be so tall and rakishly good-looking?"

That one clearly caught House off-guard. He turned, opened his mouth, shut it again, turned back, and poured a glass of wine for each of them. "It's my nature."

"You have amazing eyes," Horatio said, and smiled slightly as House's face got that confused look again. "What?"

"Are you trying to get into my pants?"

Horatio tried not to laugh and failed miserably. "You're trying to get into mine."

House smiled. "Didn't realize I was that transparent." He raised his wine glass. "A toast."

"To what are we toasting?"

"We are toasting to my cell phone." House held it up and turned it off. "Because it will no longer ring and interrupt us. And..." He crossed the room. "To my house phone. Which will also not ring and interrupt." He took it off the hook, and limped back towards the couch. "And, of course, to my wildly attractive guest."

Horatio was surprised but gratified. He clinked his glass against House's. "I would also like to propose a toast. To you."

The corners of the blue eyes crinkled. "Simple, but effective. I like it." House stretched his arm out along the back of the couch. "Don't you know any Irish toasts?"

Horatio searched his memory and came up with a few that were vastly inappropriate before settling on one he'd used to hear from his uncles. "I drink to your health when I'm with you, I drink to your health when I'm alone, I drink to your health so often I'm starting to worry about my own."

House snorted. "I actually know one," he revealed, "and it probably wouldn't go amiss here. So...here goes." He cleared his throat and gazed hard into the wine glass. "I have known many, and liked but a few, but loved only one, and this toast is to you."

Horatio's throat tightened. He swallowed. "That's a good one," he managed, and took a swift sip of the vintage, hiding his nerves beneath a thick layer of calm. Calmness was a customary defense; it was both his default mode and his best security measure.

"Oh," House said, and got up. "I forgot." Horatio watched, mystified, as he went to the stereo system and began fiddling around with CDs. He finally settled on one and a slow tune began to drift from the speakers.

Horatio looked up at House, who had moved to stand before him. A woman's sweet voice was singing over the strings and piano, but he couldn't hear what she was saying because his blood was roaring in his ears. He felt breathless.

House held out a strong, fine hand. "May I have this dance?"

Horatio searched for words and came up empty. He stretched out his hand, fingers just grazing House's palm. House took the initiative, his hand closing over the hand within it, and Horatio stood. He took a tentative step forward, and House slid his arms around his waist. They were close; Horatio could taste the wine on House's breath.

"We couldn't do this at the restaurant," he said.

House smiled. "You catch on fast." He moved closer, and Horatio leaned his head on House's shoulder. The music was soothing, just weaving in and out of Horatio's consciousness. He knew they were dancing - well, swaying on the spot would be more accurate - and that he was lightheaded. Past that, the world could have ended and he didn't think he would really have noticed.

House leaned his cheek against Horatio's hair. "I like this. I like it a lot." Something in his voice made Horatio lift his head. The song was coming to an end, and he stopped moving. Gently he disentangled himself from the embrace, and just stood there for a moment. "I'm sorry," House said awkwardly.

"No," Horatio said, and shook his head. "You're not, and you shouldn't be. Because you know what? It's okay. I'm all right."

House clearly wasn't satisfied that Horatio understood. He shifted. "Look...there's no easy way for me to say this."

"You don't have to," Horatio said quietly. "I can read between the lines."

House abruptly turned his back and pushed a hand into his hair, bracing himself against the wall with the other hand. He bowed his head, gripping the back of his neck. "You've never done this before," he said. His voice was low. "I can tell that. Knew it from the moment I first saw you. You were straight as an arrow when we met, weren't you?"

Horatio flinched. "Greg -"

"How do you know what you feel?" House turned on him, all six feet and three inches of him shaking slightly. To anyone else the movement would have been imperceptible. Horatio, on the other hand, could see it perfectly; House was vibrating like a guitar string. "How can you know anything about this? Christ, Horatio!"

Horatio chose his words carefully. Very carefully. "There is a first time for everything. I've loved women before. Now it happens that I love a man. I'm learning about it, Greg. I'll learn. You can teach me."

"What if you realize this isn't what you want?" House tilted his head back, challenging Horatio. "What if I'm just a blip on your radar? You ever think about that?"

"No," Horatio said flatly. "I've never considered that. Because I know that's not how it is. You need to give me a little credit here, Greg. I'm forty-eight years old. I'm emotionally mature. I think I can recognize love - especially when I feel it."

House cocked his head, cutting Horatio with his eyes. A muscle flexed in his jaw. He folded his arms across his chest. "Prove it," he said at last. "Prove you love me the way you say you do."

Under any other circumstances Horatio would have spurned the ultimatum purely on principle. But this time he didn't. This time he understood the stakes, and, more importantly, understood the raw primal fear that was causing House to make the challenge in the first place.

"Okay," he said, and a fresh spurt of adrenaline hit his bloodstream. "I'll prove it."

House's eyes flashed. "You know what I want." Horatio nodded wordlessly. House extended a hand. "Shall we?"


	6. Chapter 6

House stopped once he was in the bedroom, not sure whether he had gone too far. He hadn't meant to lash out the way he had, but his concern was valid. How did a perfectly heterosexual man suddenly fall in love with another man? What was it that had driven Horatio to feel what he was feeling - if in fact he _was_ feeling something? And more than that, was Horatio willing to give himself completely?

Hands came down on his shoulders. House closed his eyes and allowed himself to lean back against Horatio. The hands moved, going around his waist to fumble inexpertly at the buttons of his jacket. House smiled to himself but made no move to assist.

Horatio had evidently managed to figure out the magic of unbuttoning a jacket, because he succeeded and the garment slid from House's shoulders. There was a soft noise as it was tossed onto some unidentifiable article of furniture not too far away, and then the hands were on his stomach.

House's breath caught in his throat as hands skimmed up his chest, and Horatio's body pressed tighter against his back as he now attempted to undo a tie from behind. This was apparently easier, because in what seemed like no time at all the length of silk was being pulled from around his neck. The hands undid the collar of his shirt and then moved back down his chest, closely following the form of House's torso.

House undid two buttons on his shirt before Horatio caught his wrists. "Don't move," came the whisper from close to his ear, and House realized with a jolt precisely how sexy the low, dulcet purr of Horatio's voice was. The hands snaked up and undid the rest of the buttons of House's shirt, easing it out of his pants, then detoured to House's wrists to work on his cuffs.

The shirt flowed from House in a river of white and was summarily exiled to the same piece of furniture as the jacket and tie. House bit his lip as the cool night air hit his bare, overheated skin, and then the fabric of Horatio's jacket was against his back and hands were tracing the lines of his chest. Horatio's hot breath followed House's shoulder to where it joined his neck, and a biting, bruising kiss was laid on the tender skin.

House knew he was trembling. He figured that it was probably an appropriate response. "Horatio..."

"Shh." Horatio let go of him, and moved around to stand before him. He nodded to the bed behind House. "Sit."

House obeyed. He didn't think his legs could have held his weight for much longer anyway. Horatio looked damn good in a suit, and damn good in all black.

Horatio's jacket was already undone. He shrugged it off and threw it across the room, where it landed on House's own jacket. He tilted his head back, found the knot of his tie, and undid it. "You," he said pointedly, loosening his collar, "don't move."

House, who had been about to get up, sank back into the bed. He was aching to touch Horatio, to trail his fingertips over warm freckled skin, to lick the length of his collarbone. Instead, he bit down on his lower lip and tried not to groan as Horatio unbuttoned his shirt much too slowly.

The shirt slid down Horatio's arms to pool on the floor, and Horatio ran his fingers down his chest, idly stroking the sides of his ribs. He stepped to within House's reach and extended open hands in invitation.

House was lost from the first light brush of his fingers over Horatio's stomach. He pulled Horatio down so the man was kneeling on the bed, one leg on either side of him, and leaned forward to leave a trail of kisses up the centre of Horatio's chest. He tasted like salt and honey.

Horatio threaded his fingers into House's hair and House gripped Horatio's narrow hips, biting at the skin just below his navel. The belt was in the way, and House dealt with that quickly, dropping it on the ground at Horatio's feet. House undid the button of his trousers, eased the zipper down a couple inches, and stopped. "Commando, Lieutenant?"

Horatio had the decency to blush. "Not always."

"Hmm." House wrapped an arm around Horatio and leaned his head against the redhead's stomach. His free hand pressed firmly against Horatio's abdomen, sliding inexorably down to the bulge at his groin. Horatio's breath came out in a hiss as House stroked him through his pants.

Horatio pushed House backwards onto the bed and climbed on top of him. House was momentarily taken aback by the sudden aggression, but all thought fled his mind as Horatio kissed him. There was nothing gentle in the merciless scraping of House's stubble against Horatio's chin, the way Horatio's hands fisted in House's hair, the way their bodies slid and twisted against each other. Horatio arched up into House, words tumbling from his lips only to be lost in incoherent moans.

"I want you," he whispered hoarsely, and he was pulling at House's pants. "I want you."

House's breath competed with the harsh rasp of Horatio's zipper, and his hand delved down. Horatio was heat and hardness beneath the crisp fabric of his pants, and the shapeless groan that rose from his throat told House everything he needed to know.

"Greg," Horatio hissed. "Please." He had finally managed to undo House's trousers.

Heat pooled low in House's groin, and then he stopped thinking as Horatio fondled him. Horatio's eyes were half closed; he was all slick skin and damp hair and breathless whimpering noises and House thought he was going to go insane.

House shifted from his position on top of Horatio and pushed their pants off. Once both were naked, House fell back on the bed and let Horatio move on top of him. His weight was light, comfortable. Horatio kissed his throat, dragging his open mouth down House's chest, tasting the skin along the way. His teeth caught a nipple, and House shuddered at the strange mixture of pleasure and pain.

Horatio edged downward, and House jerked in surprise when Horatio's mouth came down on him. A groan issued from slack lips. Horatio could have been sucking him off like a complete novice - and he probably was - and House wouldn't have cared. All that mattered was the mouth and the hands and -

"Jesus fucking Christ, Horatio," House gasped, writhing suddenly in pain. He sat up abruptly and pulled Horatio up towards him before the startled redhead could do any more damage. "Blowjob 101," House advised, wincing. "You keep your teeth to yourself."

Horatio flushed. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay? I've never done this before."

"I'm fine, I'm fine." House's blood was still surging with desire, and Horatio hadn't drawn blood anyway. "It's your turn."

Horatio lay back without hesitation, and House marveled at the trust he obviously placed in him. No man, he reflected, should trust someone whom he had just bitten. At any rate, House wouldn't hold it against him, just this once. Much.

He slid down the bed and found himself with a very good view of Horatio's sizable assets. He leaned forward and ran his tongue up the length, experimentally, before taking hold of it in one hand and squeezing just tight enough that Horatio hissed in mingled surprise and discomfort.

"What do you want me to do, Horatio?" House asked with a dangerous grin.

Horatio got up on his elbows, staring down at House. "What are you talking about?"

"I want you to say it. Tell me what you want me to do to you." House swirled his tongue around the head of the cock in his hand and Horatio's head fell back. "I want to hear it. I want you to say it."

Horatio's hips lifted unconsciously for contact he knew he would not receive. His breathing was laboured. "I want you," he said slowly in a voice that would have made a whore blush, "to put my cock in your mouth, Greg."

House was pleasantly surprised by how filthily sexy Horatio managed to make the words sound. "As you command," he murmured. A groan tore itself from Horatio's throat as House began to call up all the tricks he had ever learnt. House knew he was good, but it was nice sometimes to be appreciated. Vocally, wherever possible.

House felt Horatio's hands clench in his hair and knew it was time to stop. A soft noise of dismay burst from him as House pulled back. "Turn over," he said quietly.

Horatio turned onto his stomach without question. House knew he'd be nervous, and anxiety would make things painful. So House draped his torso over Horatio like a blanket, dropping light kisses down the length of his spine, rubbing the skin in languid strokes. He felt the tension ease slowly from Horatio's body.

House didn't think he could speak. He was rock-hard and trembling. "Knees," he managed without sounding too rabid, reaching for the tube of lubricant. He slicked his cock liberally with it as Horatio pushed himself up onto his knees, then tossed the tube back onto the table.

"Horatio," he said softly. "Do you trust me?" There was a pause, and then a nod. "All right," House breathed. "All right." He took hold of Horatio's hip with his left hand and reached around for his cock with the other, wrapping his hand around it and setting a steady pace. Horatio's breathing changed, and that was House's cue.

He pushed forward, trying to move as slowly as possible. "Shit," Horatio gasped, pain lacing his words. "You're - Christ - fucking big."

"It's okay, Horatio." House ground the words out roughly and continued his slow relentless slide, sweat breaking on his brow at the effort it took not to lose control. "Relax."

Horatio's eyes shut, he bit his lip - House saw him grab white-knuckled handfuls of the sheet - but he pushed back. House stopped once he was fully inside, not wanting to move in case he hurt Horatio. He could feel every beat of the redhead's pulse around him; Horatio's heart was racing.

Slowly, House began to move. After a couple thrusts had been completed and he thought he was under enough control, House tilted his hips and hit Horatio's prostate.

The reaction was instant. A deep animal groan rose from somewhere deep in Horatio's chest and his back arched like a cat. His fists uncurled, and before House knew what was happening Horatio was clawing desperately at the sheets and slamming back against him in earnest. Light exploded behind House's eyes, and he pumped his fist faster, trying to bring Horatio to climax before he himself came.

As it was, his timing was almost perfect. House felt Horatio shudder. His body bucked, muscles clenching around House in spasms that made House gasp and grit his teeth.

The sudden bonelessness of Horatio's body was his undoing, his complete surrender to his climax too erotic to deny. House lost control. And he was a screamer. Low, keening groans built into one extended cry that echoed in the bedroom. One last thrust and all the pressure that had been building shot from him, and House collapsed against Horatio's damp back, spent.

* * *

Horatio, with two hundred pounds of weight on him, hit the bed and knocked the wind out of himself. He wriggled out from beneath House, who aided him the best he could considering his mental state, and lay on his back, trying to catch his breath. House looked thoroughly exhausted; his eyelids were drifting closed despite repeated attempts to keep them open.

Horatio's body ached. He was tired. His knees felt like they'd been burned, to say nothing of his ass. But he felt good. He was happy.

He turned, curling against House's side and nestling his head on his shoulder. House's arm wrapped around him, and Horatio pressed a gentle kiss to his chest. "Did I prove that I love you?"

House smiled. "You proved it," he said. "You proved it with interest."


	7. Chapter 7

"House." It was Chase. "Do you remember a patient of yours called Diana Sanchez?"

House paused to finish chewing on his baked potato. "Vaguely."

"She came in with abdominal pain. We did a scan. She has a grade two solid teratoma in her left ovary. She won't let us do surgery. Wants to talk to you."

House closed his eyes and wondered what the world had against him. "I'll be in in fifteen minutes." He closed the phone and glared across the table at his lunch partner. "You set that up."

Horatio shook his head. "No excuses. You owe me."

House dug through his wallet and laid a twenty on the table. "That's the last time I let you talk me into something like this." Horatio had bet him ten dollars that House would get a phone call asking him to come down to the hospital before the end of lunch. House, apparently still high on endorphins, had raised him to twenty. And lost.

"What do you have to go in for?" Horatio asked.

House decided to explain, even though teratomas still made his skin crawl. "Do you know what a teratoma is? A teratoma is a tumour with tissue or organ components. The tissues of the tumour can be drastically different from the surrounding tissues...meaning that this thing, which is in the patient's ovary, can contain hair, teeth, bone...maybe even an eyeball or a finger."

Horatio's face twisted momentarily in revulsion. "Teeth," he repeated. "The tumour can have teeth."

"And hair. And its own blood supply. Some of them even move and respond to pain." House cleaned his plate of potato with a sweep of his fork. "And on that note, I'm out of here. Got people to save."

Horatio pushed his plate away with one hand. "Suddenly I'm not hungry."

House wasn't surprised. "When do you need to leave?"

"Two hours."

"Shit." House bit his lip. "I know how it goes at the hospital...I'm not going to be back by then. Listen, um..." He rubbed the lower half of his face thoughtfully. "Take the car. I'll work something out with Wilson to pick it up."

"I could call a cab -"

"No. Take the car. It's okay."

"All right." Horatio pushed back his chair and stood. "I should start packing anyway."

"It was..." House stopped. There was no way he could say it without sounding trite. "I love you," he said simply. "And I'll miss you. Like hell."

It was the right thing to say. Horatio smiled and leaned into him. House put his arms around the redhead and could remember nobody who had ever felt more right there. "I'll call you from the airport," Horatio said softly. "What's her name?"

"Who?"

"The patient with the tumour dentata."

House let himself smile. "Diana Sanchez."

Horatio drew back, and kissed House lightly on the lips. "Well, go save Diana Sanchez's life."

House did.

* * *

"You have a teratoma," House said for the third time. "It needs to come out. Why is that so hard for you to understand?"

Diana Sanchez was like Katie Baker's mother, but worse. At five foot eleven, she wasn't at all a diminutive woman, but she had an unholy fear of all things even remotely medical, which was why she would only deal with House - he didn't look like a doctor, and that made it okay. She had come in for appendicitis and downright refused surgery until the last possible moment; that was how he had met her.

"But that'll mean surgery," she said, also for the third time. "And surgery means sharp things. And blood. And pain."

"Aren't you in pain now?" House shook his head. "Listen to me, Diana. You have a grade two teratoma. Grade two means bad. Bad means that if I leave it in there, you're going to be in more pain. Much more pain than you're in already. Surgery like this is nothing. You're in, you're out, a couple days in bed and some pills. No biggie." House shook a Vicodin into his palm and dry-swallowed it. "See? It's easy to take painkillers."

"But the surgery -"

"Will hurt. But no worse than the teratoma will hurt if you leave it in." House lowered his head and looked at her, hard. "Would I lie to you?"

Diana clearly had no idea how to answer that. "No?"

"Of course I wouldn't. Meaning you're going into surgery..." House checked his watch. "Right now."

As she was beginning to gasp in horror, the ducklings came in. Foreman was doing his best to look quietly comforting, while Cameron had sympathy slathered all over her face. Chase was his usual puppy-eyed self, which House frankly found quite amusing.

"Now, Miss Sanchez," Chase said, milking the Australian accent for all it was worth, "we're here to prep you for your operation. You won't feel a thing. Trust me."

House made his escape.

* * *

Foreman brought him the tumour later. "Thought you might want to see what they pulled out of her," he said, setting the jar on the table.

House stared at the thing inside the jar. A shapeless mass stared back at him. With an eye. One flawless brown eye. Wrapped around it was a lock of brown hair, and across a small expanse of lumpy tissue, four perfectly formed molars on part of a mandible. And if House squinted, he thought he could see a fingernail -

"Get it out of here," he said, pushing it back towards Foreman. "Go test it, see how malignant it is. Start her on chemo as soon as it makes sense. Just - for God's sake - get that thing away from me."

Foreman looked startled, but picked up the jar. He held it up. "It _is_ pretty ugly."

House turned in his chair and looked out of the window. There was nothing much to see except grass, but he would look at anything to erase the sight of the tumour. It was profanity. Sacrilege, the way the body could turn on itself. He shuddered. Shoving a camera through five feet of colon didn't seem at all unpleasant anymore.

"Whatever you do," he said, "don't let her see that."

"Okay." Foreman nodded. "House...you all right?"

House glanced up at Foreman, who had the sense to be holding the jar with the teratoma behind his back. "Ugly is fine," he said at last. "I can do ugly. But that...that's wrong. Medically and otherwise. Cancer is bad enough, but this..."

Foreman seemed to understand. "It's scary. And I mean, teratomata are congenital. She had this thing inside of her since before she was born."

House fought back another shiver. He had seen some things in his twenty years of practicing medicine that would no doubt make your average layman sob like a baby, but none of it had ever bothered him the way a teratoma had. He couldn't explain how vile the juxtaposition of hair and teeth and cancerous tissue were. Germ cells gone wrong. Of all the unlovely things House had seen - and boy had he seen some unlovely things - he maintained that teratomata were the ugliest things to come out of the human body.

Foreman had gone. But now Wilson was walking into his office. "House. Heard you talked an iatrophobe into having surgery. How'd you manage that one?"

House shrugged, thankful for the distraction. Wilson's good humour was more than welcome. "What, my good looks and charm aren't enough?" he asked wryly.

Wilson rolled his eyes. "How'd it go?"

House followed the change of subject easily. "Good. Really good, actually. Unfortunately, he's probably already almost at the airport by now."

"You mean he's leaving?"

House raised an eyebrow. "Yes, he's leaving. He has work tomorrow. And you have to take me to the airport later to pick up my car."

Wilson's jaw dropped. "You lent him the Corvette?"

House was amused. "I was thinking about letting him go on the bike, you know, but I thought his bag would've gotten in the way."

The oncologist pulled out a chair and took a seat, unconsciously adjusting his tie. "So how good is good?" he asked a little too casually.

House squinted. "Is that a nice way of asking if we're banging?" At the expression on Wilson's face, he smirked, and added, "Well, in answer to the question you asked me yesterday - yes, the sex _is_ that good."

Wilson's face twisted into a comical mix of teenage-boy-gross-out and a grin of epic proportions. "I suppose I can't tell you that's too much information considering I literally asked for it. Well...I guess I'm happy for you. I can't wait to see how this one turns out."

"Have a little faith, Wilson." House reached for three of the balls he kept on his desk and started juggling. "Besides, shouldn't you be more concerned about who you're seeing?"

Wilson did a double-take. "What makes you think I'm seeing someone?"

"New shoes." House nodded to Wilson's feet. "Leather. Probably expensive."

"You're basing whether I'm seeing someone on my shoes?"

"And your tie. It's new. Doesn't go with your shirt, by the way. So who is she?"

Wilson went for an innocent look and unfortunately landed somewhere between shifty and confused. "Um..."

"Nurse? Patient? Cuddy?"

"No to all three."

House squinted. "Cameron? No, wait - Chase!"

"Yes. I mean, no. Not Chase."

"Cameron?"

Wilson quirked an eyebrow and seated himself comfortably in a chair. "Is there something fundamentally wrong with me and Cameron or is there some other explanation for the hilarious look on your face?"

"Good God." House covered his face with both hands and let out a rather loud snort of laughter. "Cameron. You're seeing Cameron."

Wilson tried for finely tuned outrage and missed by a mile. "What's wrong with Cameron?"

"Where do I begin?" House had long since racked up Cameron's defects in his mind, and now he listed them one by one. "She has this unhealthy attraction to damaged people - which I guess accounts for why she's attracted to us. She's annoyingly ethical. I can't treat a patient without her pelting off to Cuddy and blabbing on me. She's hypersensitive."

"Right, and where do we get to her faults?" Wilson was clearly amused. "You say you can't treat a patient without her telling Cuddy; I say she's orthodox. You say she's hypersensitive; I say she's compassionate. You say she's attracted to damaged people; I say she's...attracted to damaged people. It's not against the law."

"You say that because you're the same way. You get into relationships with your patients knowing they're going to die anyway -" House stopped abruptly. "Wait. So she's not still seeing Chase?"

Wilson's eyes widened. "She was seeing Chase?"

"Oh God." House started to laugh. "You didn't know?"

Wilson leaned forward. "She was seeing Chase? House, seriously. You're not kidding? Cameron and Chase? How long ago?"

"Currently, to the best of my knowledge." House leaned back in the chair and fought the urge to giggle uncontrollably. This really wasn't funny. Really. "Okay, you know what? You go to your office and do something constructive. I'll talk to Cameron."

Wilson was instantly suspicious. "Why?"

"Because I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do. And when you think you don't owe me, you remember that poker game I helped you win." House steepled his fingers under his chin and nodded to the door. "Go on. I'll call you when I know what's what."

* * *

"Cameron," he said as soon as she'd walked in. "Have a seat."

She paused, looking confused. "Am I in trouble?"

"Have you done something you should be in trouble for?" House asked, and then sighed. "Whatever it is, save it. I have a couple personal questions to ask you."

She sat down slowly. "What?"

"You're still seeing Chase?"

"What does that have to -"

"Humour me. Are you still seeing Chase?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of meaning..."

"Meaning sort of." He gave her a look, and she elucidated unwillingly, "On a casual basis."

"Meaning you're still screwing him."

Cameron winced. "Yes, but I still don't see what -"

House held up a hand. "Cameron. Please. Be quiet when I'm trying to interrupt you." At her bemused silence, he continued, "And you're also seeing Wilson." It wasn't a question.

She stiffened. "Who told you that?"

"Wilson's shoes," House said.

Cameron folded her arms tightly. Her face looked pinched. "This is none of your business."

"He's my friend."

"I didn't know you had friends," she said bitingly.

House couldn't help but be surprised by the harshness of the statement. "Whether you knew it or not, Wilson _is_ my friend. And furthermore - newsflash, Cameron: you're not the only person in the universe entitled to be concerned for someone else's welfare."

She stared down into her lap. "I don't know how this got so messed up," she said quietly. "Things with Chase were just...nothing. It was just sex, you know? But somewhere along the line it got a little more complicated. And then Jimmy came on the scene, and -"

"Jimmy?"

Cameron nodded, oblivious to House's amusement. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore," she whispered. "I know I can't have them both - or I shouldn't, anyway - but I don't know which one I want."

"If you want either."

She looked up at him, her eyes welling with tears. "I've done something really stupid, haven't I?"

"We're all allowed to have stupid moments. But you know you're going to have to make a decision." She nodded. House pursed his lips. "You can have one, or the other. Or neither. But not both." He looked at her steadily, and realized that she was going to cry. "Cameron," he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "Take ten minutes. Wash your face. You'll figure something out."

She stood up, drying one eye with the heel of her hand. "Thank you," she said.

House just nodded.

* * *

"House."

Horatio sank into the chair. "Greg."

The phone crackled. "Horatio."

He turned, looking out of the vast plate-glass windows to where the planes taxied across the runway. "Diana Sanchez. Did she agree to the surgery?"

"It took about forty-five minutes, but yes, she did." House gave a sigh of frustration. Horatio could almost see him raking one hand back through his hair. "Where are you?"

"Departure lounge," Horatio reported. "It's fifteen minutes until boarding."

"Cameron and Wilson."

"What?"

"Cameron and Wilson. They're seeing each other."

"Didn't you tell me she was with Chase?"

"She is."

Horatio laughed softly. "Well, this is interesting. What are you going to do?"

"I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I have to do nothing. Wilson, presumably, is going to do something, and I will be bracing for the fallout from whatever he does. Like it or not, it'll affect me in one way or another, seeing as two of the involved are on my team, and one is my best friend." House heaved another sigh.

"Are you sure you want to get yourself into this?" Horatio asked.

House snorted. "I'm not sure I know how to get myself out of this."

"I got a call," Horatio said. "A couple bodies turned up. There's a big furor...everyone wants to know where I am and why I wasn't there. So I'm not going to be able to leave Miami again for a while."

"Long while?"

"Long while."

"Dammit." House swore. "I might be able to take some time in September."

"September's almost three months away."

"Thank you for the calendar check, Captain Obvious."

Horatio smiled. "My pleasure."

"Oh," said House now, with a trace of guilt in his voice. "I meant to tell you. Um, Wilson knows."

Fear spiked irrationally in Horatio's blood. "He does."

"He does. And he doesn't give a shit. Doesn't even give half a shit." House chuckled in amusement as Horatio breathed an audible sigh of relief. "You worry too much."

A voice crackled over the PA system and a happy, disembodied voice announced that boarding would now begin for his flight. Around him, his fellow passengers started to gather their belongings and their children.

"Greg," he said, rising. "I have to board now."

"Okay. Give me a call when you're settled. No rush. I know you have a lot of work to do...swabs and analyses and fun forensic stuff."

Horatio hoisted his bag and joined the boarding queue. "Listen, thank you for everything. I had fun." He considered the absurdity of his words and laughed. "I love you."

"I love _you_," House returned. "Bye."

* * *

"He. Has. Kawasaki. Syndrome."

"You don't know that!"

Cuddy didn't want to hear it. She seemed, inexplicably, to agree with Cameron. "House, you have played with this boy enough."

"No," House snapped, "you listen to me. I have seen this thing before. He has all the symptoms - high-grade fever, conjunctivitis, erythema of the lips, swollen hands and feet, rash, joint pain, swollen lymph nodes, tachycardia. He has thrombocytosis. His ESR and CRP are elevated. His liver function tests showed hepatic inflammation. His LP showed aseptic meningitis. There's no definitive test for Kawasaki syndrome! Does he have to die before you'll let me treat him?"

"Kawasaki syndrome is extremely rare," Cuddy replied in that voice she reserved for explaining very difficult things to very young children. "There have only been ten reported cases in the last twenty years."

House flexed his hands against the urge to throw something at her. "I know you don't like me," he said with surprising calm. "And I don't care. But you know and I know and hell, even Cameron knows, that I am a damn good doctor. So would you just give me the go-ahead to start the treatment and stop listening to her? High doses of IVIG. He should show marked improvement in twenty-four hours. If I'm wrong, it won't kill him. If I'm wrong, you can take him, run all the tests you want on him." He paused, breathing heavily, and added, "But I know I'm right."

Cuddy seemed to consider it. "Dr. Foreman?"

"The patient shows all the symptoms," Foreman said. "Kawasaki syndrome is always diagnosed clinically because there is no specific lab test that can tell if someone has it. This kid has met all the diagnostic criteria ten times over. I think House is right."

"What about scarlet fever?" Cameron expostulated. "Toxic shock syndrome? It could be juvenile idiopathic arthritis!"

Cuddy - somewhat reluctantly - held up a hand. "Dr. Chase?"

Chase responded predictably. "I think he's right too."

Cuddy sighed, and turned to Cameron. "The thing about Kawasaki syndrome is that treatment has to be started as soon as possible to prevent damage to the coronary arteries. If this boy does have Kawasaki's, I'll be killing him if I don't let House treat him." She paused, obviously weighing her options, and then sighed again, more dramatically. "Do it."

* * *

Outside, House nodded to Chase. "Again, siding with me to save your skin. Very smooth."

"I disagree with you, I'm wrong. I agree with you, I'm being a suck-up." Chase grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop walking. "What do you want from me? Look, I've had some good ideas as well, all right? There's merit in my suggestions!"

Foreman looked amused. "You want some salsa for that chip on your shoulder?"

Chase clearly did not think that was at all funny. "Why did I expect you to side with me? Look at you, eating lunch alone every day. Your personal relationships are crumbling. Your colleagues don't like you. You're turning into _him_! Is that what you want?" Chase shrugged and took a couple of steps backwards. "You know what, whatever. Whatever."

Foreman looked after Chase's retreating back with a mild consternation that House sensed masked a deeper disturbance. "I should..."

"Leave him be," House said. "I'll talk to him."

* * *

He found Chase in the lab, calibrating a centrifuge. "I know I'm hard on you," House said without preamble. "I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm just going to tell you that I do it because you need it. Okay? You need to build your confidence."

"So you try to build my confidence by crushing my ego?" Chase turned, folded his arms. He was angry. House couldn't blame him. "You insult me. Belittle me. Just because you had a crappy childhood doesn't mean you've got to force it on everyone else."

House closed his eyes. "Are you going to listen or speak? Because you can't do both." Chase was silent. "Yes, there is merit in your suggestions. You're right a fair percent of the time. But you and Cameron have the same problem. You're not confident, you don't stick to your ideas. Foreman shoves them down my throat. Even when he's wrong, he makes me pay attention."

"So I'm supposed to push my diagnoses in your face?" Chase looked uncertain. "You never listen to them."

"I don't listen because you're never sure. If you were vocal and forceful, I'd consider them, because I'd be convinced that _you_ were convinced. And if _you_ were convinced, I'd think there was a reasonable likelihood of the diagnosis being right." House raised his eyebrows. "See?"

Chase pondered that for a moment. "It does make a crazy sort of sense," he said grudgingly, then paused, studying House as though seeing him for the first time. "You know, I'm beginning to get you. I think I understand you more."

"Do you?" House arched an eyebrow.

"Well," Chase amended, "sort of."

* * *

"Cancer."

"No." House shook his head. "Wilson is wrong."

"All the signs point to cancer," Chase said.

"The cancer's a symptom. It's masking the real problem." House turned to the whiteboard and drew a thick black line through the word cancer. "Okay. What diseases do we know that have cancer as a symptom?"

"HPV," Chase supplied immediately. "Hepatitis B."

"Why are you making this a competition?" Foreman wanted to know.

House laid the marker on the desk with a loud crack. "Because it is! This is what medicine is about - who can make the right diagnosis first. And whoever said winning isn't everything obviously never held a scalpel. Focus, people! Diseases that have cancer as a symptom!"

"Herpes," Cameron said tentatively. "Well, Epstein-Barr. It can lead to Burkitt's lymphoma."

"Yes, good." House wrote it down under hepatitis B. "Foreman?"

"HTLV."

"Thank you." House scribbled that down as well and stood back from the board. "Okay, you three get yourselves some coffee, take a five minute break, buy me a sandwich. When you come back, I'll tell you the plan."

* * *

Foreman and Chase elected to go to the cafeteria while Cameron got the coffee. On the way down in the elevator, Foreman couldn't help but mutter, "Just when I thought I had him all figured out...now House has a messiah complex."

"It has nothing to do with him wanting to be better than Wilson," Chase said. "It's about how soon the patient gets treatment. That's what he means when he says winning is everything. They're fighting the disease. We all are. It doesn't matter who wins, what matters is how soon the patient gets treatment."

Foreman was surprised. "You know an awful lot about House."

Chase grinned wryly. "And you wouldn't believe how much that scares me."

* * *

House sat down on the edge of his bed, easing his shoes off. He was glad to be home, to be away from the fluorescent lights and rubbing alcohol scent of the hospital. He lay back. His sheets smelled like Horatio. He closed his eyes, just for a moment.

* * *

His phone rang. "House," Wilson said. "House, it's ten in the morning. You're late. Your team has even diagnosed your patient for you."

House growled quietly in response and buried his face deeper into the pillow, inhaling the scent of Perry Ellis 360 and wishing the bed wasn't so empty.

"House." Wilson was still talking. Why was that? "Get up."

"No," he mumbled. "Not today."

"Not today? Are you kidding?" Wilson laughed. He didn't seem angry. "You have twelve clinic patients waiting on you and one very grateful woman who plans to start chemotherapy for the cancer caused by her HPV as soon as possible."

"S'nice." House pulled the sheet over his head. "Wilson, go away."

"House, you have to come in," the oncologist pressed. "You're a doctor. Saving lives is not optional. Come on, you signed on for this when you graduated from medical school."

House winced. "Oh yeah."

"Oh yeah what? You forgot? I expect you in here in no less than half an hour."

"Mm."

"And House?"

"Hmm?"

"We still have to pick up your car."

Barely half a second later House was off the bed and heading for the bathroom.

* * *

"We took clinic this morning for you," Cameron said. She looked harassed and exhausted. "A man with a cockroach in his ear, a couple ear infections, a bad cold, three cases of gastroenteritis - you get the picture."

"And we have a patient," House said unnecessarily, taking the file she was waving around. "Fatigue, myalgia, tachycardia, arrhythmia, nausea, myoclonic jerk, double vision, ataxia, brain fog." He pushed open the door and found Chase and Foreman in the middle of an argument in front of the whiteboard. "Children! Differential diagnosis."

Cameron said neurosyphilis, Foreman put forward MS and Chase declared fibromyalgia equally decisively simultaneously, and House put a hand to his head and wondered what he'd ever done to the world.

"One at a time," House said. "Did anyone do a tick search?"

Foreman did a double-take. "Lyme disease? She doesn't have an EM rash."

"How would you know? You obviously didn't do a full-body examination or you'd have found the tick." House looked around. "Three qualified doctors here and nobody did a tick search." He shook his head and checked the file. "Cameron, you're on tick duty. Chase, you draw blood. Do an ELISA. If it's positive or inconclusive, do a Western blot."

Foreman folded his arms. "And I suppose you want me to break into her house and see if I find a tick?"

House opened the file and checked the address. "Nah, she lives near a forested area, it's reasonable to assume she could have come into contact with a tick at some point in time."

"She likes hunting," Cameron supplied belatedly.

House set down the file and counted to ten silently. "Cameron," he said. "Tick. Chase, blood. Foreman, use your judgement."

* * *

"You're wrong." Chase slid the test results across the table. "Well," he modified, "the test came back negative anyway."

House scanned the sheet. "False negative," he said. "Check her for cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex type two. They can interfere with the results. And do a PCR."

"Polymerase chain reaction?" Chase looked appropriately skeptical. "What does that have to do with Lyme disease?"

"The PCR is an attempt to detect the DNA of the Lyme disease spirochete. The Western blot and the ELISA only look for the antibodies." House paused, gnawing on a thumbnail. "Get Foreman to set her up for a SPECT scan. Look for cerebral hypoperfusion of frontal cortical and subcortical structures. Anything from Cameron?"

"I stopped by on my way down here. No tick." Chase looked at House. "There doesn't have to be a tick. It could've detached before she got here. There's no definitive test to determine whether she has Lyme disease."

House pointed at him. "If hypoperfusion is present, I'll take that as a solid diagnosis. Get Foreman and get on it."


	8. Chapter 8

Horatio looked down at the girl on the table. "Talk to me, Alexx."

"Kayleigh Finch. She was only thirteen, poor baby." With the fingers of one gloved hand, the pathologist parted curly brown hair and showed him an entry wound high behind the girl's right ear. "Exit wound through her left temple. Calleigh took the bullet. Ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, adhesive residue there and around her mouth."

"Duct tape," Horatio said. "Sexual assault?"

"Serious vaginal tearing, similar damage to the rectum." Alexx sighed and stroked the girl's cheek lightly. "I recovered semen from both orifices and from her throat, epithelials from her teeth. Evidence suggests that not all the assault was done ante-mortem. There was also a pubic hair stuck in her teeth. DNA has everything."

Horatio closed his eyes momentarily, and walked on to the next table. "And this one?"

"Eleanor McKidd." Another mulatto girl, with the same caramel skin and angelic face. "Twelve. Entry wound in the same location, same trajectory, bullet recovered and given to Calleigh. Same ligature marks, similar sexual assault, but he was rougher with her." Alexx pulled back the sheet all the way.

Eleanor McKidd's small chest had caved in under the force of her killer's blows. Shards of white rib pierced the skin. "Eight broken ribs," Alexx said softly. "Her sternum was crushed. The resultant punctured lungs would have given her massive internal bleeding. She didn't need the bullet."

"Tox screen?" Horatio asked, shaken.

"Negative. He used physical restraints, nothing chemical." Alexx shook her head. "How could anyone hurt something so precious, Horatio?"

"I don't know, Alexx," he whispered. "I don't know."

* * *

"The bullet was a .25 ACP," Calleigh reported, "so the gun used was probably a Colt Vest Pocket. They're not all that common, we could check the registry and see who owns one, but this one's probably not registered. I'll do it just to be sure. The markings on the Finch bullet match the markings on the McKidd bullet, so yes, the same gun was definitely used."

* * *

Delko had a little more, but still nothing conclusive. "DNA just came back. The semen found on both victims came from the same perp, the DNA in the hair matched the semen, nothing matched anything in the database. So basically, both attacks were done by the same person and by just the one guy, but we have no idea who he is. Adhesive residue from both victims matched your basic roll of duct tape that you can buy at any hardware."

"No prints found at the scene," Horatio mused, sifting through the photographs of the crime scene. "What's the link between the victims?"

"Plenty of links," Delko said, leaning across the counter and picking out one picture that showed the park where both girls had been found. "They're cousins. They go to the same school. They both spend their afternoons in this park." He tapped the photograph. "Kayleigh was killed on Saturday afternoon, around three o'clock. Eleanor was killed on Sunday around noon. They were found together early Sunday afternoon within a couple of feet of each other."

Horatio tried to settle his thoughts. "Who was with them in the park?"

"Parents. It's a routine...the mothers go with the kids, catch up on the latest gossip while the daughters play." Delko scratched his head. "It's weird. Kayleigh was killed on Saturday, but she wasn't reported missing until after Eleanor was reported missing on Sunday."

"Did you talk to the parents?"

"Both fathers are out of the picture. But get this - Eleanor's mother is suddenly out of town." Delko raised an eyebrow. "I spoke to Kayleigh's mother. She said she was of the understanding that Kayleigh was staying with Eleanor on Saturday night."

"Something is very, very wrong here." Horatio stood up. "Eric, talk to the family. Find out where Mrs. McKidd is. I want her back here right now."

"Yeah, will do." Delko paused. "Hey, H...where'd you go? You just disappeared."

Horatio tried to figure out how to explain it and settled on evasive truthfulness. "I had some personal things to take care of. But it's okay. I'm back now."

Delko smiled. "Just don't do that again, man. We need you here."

"I know, Eric. I know."

* * *

"House."

"Greg."

"Okay, when I said no rush I didn't mean wait nine hours after you landed to pick up the phone."

"I was getting settled," Horatio demurred.

House snorted, then sobered. "Is it bad?"

"The case?"

"No, your jetlag. Yes, the case."

"Very bad." Horatio covered his eyes with his hand and leaned back in the chair. "Two young girls, both sexually assaulted, both murdered. Worse yet, the parents seem to know something."

House made an indescribable noise of what sounded like a mixture of disgust and contempt. "I have to admit, my suspects are a lot less morally decrepit. Diseases are nasty little things, but they don't kill people out of malice."

"Dead children." Horatio sighed. "Two perfect days with you and I come back to two dead children."

"Any ideas?"

"I'm still familiarizing myself with the case." Horatio opened his eyes and looked down at the photographs he had spread out on his desk. "How do you rape someone if you have their ankles wrapped with duct tape?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone. "Is that a rhetorical question?"

"Not necessarily." Horatio picked up a photograph of the two girls. They were both in fetal positions, their backs to each other. "This might have no relevance whatsoever to anything, but you can't rape someone if their ankles are taped together."

"Astute observation. Is there someone around who can give you a pat on the head?"

"So what did he tie her to?"

"Bed? Chair? Tree? Friendly neighbourhood garden gnome?" House made a sound that was the oral equivalent of a shrug. "How's the hard evidence?"

"There's a lot of it," Horatio said. "He left biologicals every -"

"English."

"Semen," Horatio rephrased. "Semen, skin cells, pubic hair."

"That _is_ a lot of it." House paused thoughtfully. "So...can't you match it to a database?"

"Only if he has a record, or is in the military or law enforcement."

"Which he isn't."

"Right." Horatio looked down at the pictures. "What kind of man rapes a twelve year old girl?"

"The kind of man," said House quietly, "that you're going to catch."

* * *

"H. H." Horatio turned his head away from the window before cracking his eyelids open, trying to adjust himself to the sunlight that was now streaming in. Delko crossed the room and closed the blinds. "Have you been here all night?"

Horatio looked at the phone in his hand. It was off; he supposed he'd fallen asleep on the phone with House and the battery had eventually died. He was still seated at his desk, and the pictures were spread out just as he'd left them.

"I guess I have," he said slowly. "Eric. You witnessed the autopsies, right? Did either of the girls have abrasions anywhere?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. Why?"

"He tied them to something. If they were raped in the park, what did he tie them to?"

Delko paused. "A tree would be the obvious guess, but then there would have been scratches, pieces of the bark embedded in their skin. So...they were kept somewhere else. Maybe he tortured them there, then left them in the park."

A phone rang. Horatio instinctively reached for his, then remembered the battery had died. Delko answered his cell. "Eric Delko. What? All right, we're there." He looked at Horatio. "Neighbourhood watch picked up a guy at the crime scene. He was dropping off our third victim."

Horatio stood. "You call Calleigh and Alexx. I'll drive."

* * *

The park was quiet. Nobody had gathered to make a scene yet - no reporters, no angry family, no rioting community members. Horatio and Delko stood in silence, watching as Alexx made her preliminary examination of the girl.

"Horatio," she said, her voice breaking. "This little girl can't be seven years old."

She was a tiny thing. Biracial, like Kayleigh and Eleanor, with wide green eyes and brown ringlets. Once, Horatio thought, she would have had delicately flared nostrils, a cupid's bow mouth. She would have grown up to be beautiful. Instead, where the lower half of her face had been, there was now a mangled, broken mess of bone and tissue.

Alexx turned the girl's head gently and picked something small and white out of her blood-matted hair. She let out a sigh that was dangerously close to tears, and held the object out to Horatio, who shuddered inwardly. "A tooth," the pathologist said simply.

"H." Delko, who had been looking at everything but the body, nodded to the grass. "It's clean. No blood spatter, nothing. He didn't do this here."

Calleigh had come up behind them and was staring sadly at the girl. "I'll take the pictures," she said, hefting the camera. "You two talk to the suspect. Four men from the area have him at gunpoint over there." She gave a general wave to the road behind a small wooded area, and added pointedly, "You should probably go now before they shoot him themselves."

Horatio was not at all sad to leave that scene of death behind him. He and Delko walked from beneath the trees onto the road, and saw four ex-Marine types gathered menacingly around an open car trunk. One had a rifle aimed into the trunk. "The only reason you're still alive," Horatio heard him seethe, "is because the ammunition for this thing costs more than is worth wastin' on your sorry ass."

"Gentlemen," Horatio said in what he hoped was his calmest and most reasonable voice. "Thank you. We'll take it from here."

"Would you like the gun, officer?" the man with the rifle asked politely.

"Thank you, sir, I have my own." Horatio drew back his jacket to showcase the Glock on his hip. "Now if you four wouldn't mind moving so I can have a look at your trunk."

The man in the trunk was barely even that. He couldn't have been more than eighteen, a scared, hungry-looking boy with the pinpoint pupils of a drug addict. There was drying blood on his hands and on his clothes, and his chest stuttered with the uneven rhythm of his breathing. Someone had hit him a good one as well, judging by the splotch of purple blossoming on his jaw.

"What is your name?" Horatio asked quietly.

"Gavin," the boy whispered. He was pale, with a wide, flat nose. His hair kinked. Mixed, but not as aesthetically pleasing a mixture as the girls in the park. "Gavin Haskell."

"You brought that girl here?"

"Nadia," the boy said. "Her name is Nadia."

"Nadia Harris," one of the man said, and swore. "That's Dave's kid. He lives on the other street. Oh man..."

"Did you kill her?" Horatio asked.

Gavin's eyes flickered. His lip trembled. "No."

"Gavin," Horatio said, staring right into the boy's eyes. "Gavin, you were seen bringing her body here. Her blood is all over you. It's time to come clean. Did you kill her?"

"No." It was a whimper. "No."

It sounded like the truth, but he had to be lying. Horatio dropped his voice. "Listen to me. Do you know how much trouble I'd get into if I turned around and walked away and left you in the hands of these four gentlemen right here? Do you? Because I can tell you - I wouldn't get in any trouble at all. I'd be considered to have done this community, this city, this entire _country_, a favour. So you, my friend, had better start thinking about telling the truth, or I will seriously consider doing exactly that."

Gavin quivered, but said nothing.

Horatio turned to Delko. "Process him."

* * *

"I got the results back from DNA," Calleigh said. "The biologicals we found on the first two girls are both matches for Gavin Haskell. The biologicals we collected from Nadia Harris are not."

That gave Horatio pause. "Not?"

"Not. They are, however, those of a close male relative. I'm thinking brother."

Horatio nodded. "I'm thinking brother too. Let's ask him."

* * *

"Gavin," Horatio said, closing the door behind him. "You assaulted and murdered Kayleigh Finch and Eleanor McKidd." The boy flinched, but made no attempt to deny it. "You did not assault or murder Nadia Harris. You do, however, know who did." Horatio pulled out a chair and sat. "And you're going to tell me who it is."

"I can't," Gavin said. He was full of jerks and twitches - withdrawal from the meth, Horatio figured. "I just - I can't, you know?"

"It's your brother," Horatio said. "We know it's your brother. All we need is a name."

Gavin's left eyelid twitched. He looked uneasy. "I got two brothers."

"And we'll arrest both and put them both through excruciating hell unless you tell me which one is the guilty one." Horatio looked at him expectantly. "Which do you prefer?"

Gavin bit his lip, and at that moment his jaw spasmed so that blood started a slow trickle down his chin. He didn't seem to notice.

"Hector," he said at last. "He works in a garage on Thornhill, okay?"

* * *

Hector Haskell was twenty, so gaunt he made Gavin look well-nourished, and was a perfect example of why some people still consider miscegenation unwise. None of his parents' good genes - assuredly there had been a few - showed in him. He had an outwardly sloping face, thick lips, dry, frizzy hair, and a pasty complexion that seemed to have survived in Miami against all odds and none the worse for wear.

The eldest brother Vincent was also in the garage, and he outshone his brothers wonderfully. He was tall and broad-shouldered, corded with muscle. His features had the ethereal beauty of the girls in the park, but his jaw had a set that said he brooked no insolence or insult and his fists would prove it.

Horatio explained the situation to Vincent as Delko cuffed Hector. "Gavin has confessed to the assault and murder of two young girls, and has implicated Hector in the third."

"Gavin?" Vincent looked nonplussed. "Anything like that would've been Hector's idea in the first place. Gavin's..." He tapped his temple. "Soft in the head, shall we say. Hector's always been creepy. I bought a handgun because of him. To protect myself in case he ever snapped completely."

"Has he ever threatened you?" Horatio asked, purely for informational purposes.

"Sure. He's always been...well, jealous, I guess." Vincent looked sheepish. "He and Gavin didn't get the looks in the family, you know? Always said Mom should've married black or Dad should've married white and nobody should ever have pissed around with this crossbreeding thing because they got the worst of it."

"They killed mixed girls," Horatio said. "Very pretty mixed girls."

"And there you have it." Vincent shook his head in disgust. "My brothers. Jesus. They can say whatever they want about marrying your colour, all _I_ know is my damn parents should've stopped after me."

Horatio nodded. "The families of three little girls agree with you wholeheartedly."

* * *

"We have the confessions," Calleigh said. "Apparently the whole thing was Hector's idea. He forced Gavin to actively participate in the first two murders, then he decided he wanted a try on the third but he still got Gavin to dump the body." She set down the wad of pages with a delicate shudder.

"This doesn't explain the discrepancy between the time that Kayleigh Finch disappeared and the time she was reported missing," Horatio said suddenly. It was something that had been at the back of his mind, and it had just jumped once again to the forefront. "Her mother's involved somehow."

"Her mother," Delko said, standing in the doorway, "is also the mother of the Haskells. Divorced, changed her name, remarried. She found out what Hector had done, but didn't report it because, well, he and Gavin were her children too."

"How could someone be torn between a monster and an angel?" Calleigh wondered out loud. "Is it possible to forget your priorities that badly?"

"To a mother, your kid's never a monster," Delko pointed out. "No person is so irredeemably bad that a mother and a dog can't love them."

"Are they charging her with something?" Horatio asked. "If she had reported this, Eleanor McKidd and Nadia Harris would still be alive."

"Oh, they're charging her," Delko assured him. "The whole city's up in arms over this. Anybody and everybody even remotely related to this is gonna pay big-time."

"Good," Horatio said. It had been a long day, and he was tired all the way down to the marrow of his bones. "I think I'm going to take an early night tonight."

"In your office?" Delko asked with a smile.

Horatio gave him a look. "Funny."

"Eric Delko, you stop that," Calleigh said in a disapproving motherly tone that took Horatio completely by surprise. "Go on, Horatio. Sleep early tonight, sleep late tomorrow. You deserve it."

Horatio could draw only one conclusion. He tilted his head. "When are you due?"

Calleigh started and almost dropped the pen in her hands. "Good Lord, how did you know? I haven't told anyone yet!"

Delko was staring. "Calleigh?"

"Oh." She went red. Turning to Horatio, she said accusingly, "See what you've gone and done now?" To Delko, she said quietly, "I meant to tell you, I just couldn't find the right time."

"Are you sure?" he asked in total stupefaction.

"Positive. Two and a half months." She glanced back at Horatio. "Seriously, how did you know? And don't tell me I'm showing, because I'm not."

Horatio gave a smile he carefully and accurately judged to be sufficiently enigmatic. "It was in your voice just now. You'll make a great mother, Calleigh. Congratulations."

She smiled warmly. "Thank you."

Delko was still apparently trying to get over the news. "So...what are we going to do?"

"You are either going to put a ring on my finger and seal this deal like we've been talking about for weeks, or this child is going to be born out of wedlock." Calleigh shrugged. "It's up to you, really."

Delko struggled to articulate something for a few moments, then abruptly turned to Horatio. "Know anywhere I can get a nice ring?"

* * *

His cell rang. "Horatio."

"You sound preoccupied."

Horatio glanced sideways at Delko, who was poring over a selection of white gold rings. "I'm looking at rings."

"Well in that case I accept."

"They're not for you," Horatio said, amused, and picked up a sapphire ring. "Although this would go spectacularly with your eyes."

House laughed. "Who's getting married?"

"Eric and Calleigh."

"Already?"

"Extenuating circumstances," Horatio said lightly.

House caught it immediately. "Ooh, pregnant. Nice one."

"Yes, I thought so too." Horatio turned as Delko tapped him on the shoulder and shook his head at the ring in his hand. "Too complicated, Eric. Try a cleaner style, something she doesn't have to worry about damaging in the course of work."

Delko looked amused. "You know a lot about rings, H."

"I have many interests," Horatio said diplomatically, and wandered off to another case where he saw the perfect ring. "Oh, this is nice."

"Are you finally talking to me?" House wanted to know.

"Yes, I'm finally talking to you." Horatio pointed to the ring and the girl took it out of the case and handed it to him. He held it up to the light. It was platinum, a modern design, with an aquamarine set into it, and one small diamond on either side. The aquamarine was the exact shade of House's eyes. "This is very nice."

"Are we still talking about a ring for Calleigh here?"

"Yes." Horatio handed back the ring and walked over to Delko, who had suddenly and miraculously stumbled upon the right ring. "That's it," he said, and put a hand on Delko's shoulder. "Buy it, Eric. Don't even think about it, just buy it."

"Okay, you know what? You do your ring-shopping and I'll go save some lives, all right?" House was clearly losing patience.

"Not necessary. We're finished here." Horatio stepped out of the shop and into the hot Miami sun. Delko, who was holding the small plastic bag gingerly, was shooting him curious glances. Horatio tossed him the keys in response. "How's it been going for you?"

House sighed. "I just had six patients come in with STDs."

"Ah, that explains everything." Horatio settled himself into the passenger seat of the Hummer, stretching out his legs. "Nothing to tax your brain. You see the disease as a puzzle to solve, not an enemy to defeat. Most doctors are about saving the patient; you're about beating the disease. You just happen to save lives in the process."

"Yes, and I get bored if I don't have something interesting to do. It's not a crime." There was a noise, the sound of someone speaking, and then House sighed. "Speaking of something interesting, I have another puzzle to solve. Take it easy, all right?"

"Back at you," Horatio said, and hung up.

Delko raised an eyebrow, and the corner of his mouth curled up as though the two were connected by some invisible thread. "That the girlfriend?"

"In a manner of speaking," Horatio said, and bit his tongue hard. "Look, Eric..."

"No worries, H." Delko's eyes were on the road, but he was smiling. "Your secret's safe with me. She's a doctor, huh? From out of state?"

"Yes." Technically, it wasn't really lying. "Eric, just drive."

Delko grinned and did as he was told.

* * *

Back at the lab, Horatio found himself taking the long, lonely walk to the autopsy room. He needed to talk to someone. He would trust Delko and Calleigh with his life any day, but for the contents of his heart...somehow, that someone had to be Alexx.

She was pleased to see him, as always. "Horatio." She set aside the liver she was holding. "This belongs to Katie Michaels, by the way - the college student they brought in this morning with the displaced trachea? Death by hepatic failure, with signs of previous damage caused by alcohol. Poor girl drank herself to death. She hit her neck on the corner of her desk on the way down." She stopped. "But you didn't come here to talk about the case, did you?"

"No." Horatio looked down at his hands, trying to formulate the words in his head. "I need to talk to you about something personal."

"Honey, you know you can talk to me about anything." Alexx sat down on the edge of a nearby table. "What is it?"

"Did you hear anything about me from Eric?" he asked, stalling for time.

She raised an eyebrow. "I heard you were seeing someone and that she was a doctor from out of state. Is it true?"

Horatio decided that if he was going down, he was going to go down hard. "Doctor, yes. Out of state, yes. She...no."

What had Horatio expected? Had he expected that Alexx would do backflips across the room and start hurling objects at him? No, he hadn't, and that was good, because it wasn't what she did. Her eyes widened, and then she just nodded, lips forming just the slightest smile. "Okay."

Horatio looked up at her. "Okay? Just 'okay'?"

"Well, I'd run the usual 'I never figured you were the type', but then I never figured you were any kind of type. I don't judge people. Not the ones I work on, not the ones I work with. Your life is yours to live, and the only thing that matters is if you're happy." She smiled. "Are you happy, Horatio?"

"Yes," he said simply. "I'm...I'm very happy."

"Good." Alexx winked and tossed him a pair of gloves. "Put these on, you can help me put her back together." As he worked his hands into the gloves, she enquired, "Is it serious?"

"It's serious." He pulled back the sheet from the late Katie Michaels and they began replacing her organs. Pathology was interesting work. It got a bit messy with the decomps and the floaters, but Horatio could find nothing disgusting about the human body, even when it was dead. Once the person had died, it was just a rusting machine.

"Does he love you?" Alexx asked. Horatio lifted his head, startled. "I'm asking if he loves you because I know you love him. It's written all over your face."

Horatio hefted Katie Michaels' heart. "Yes," he said at last. "Yes, he does."

"And does this out-of-state doctor have a name?"

"His name is House," Horatio said, unable to stop the small smile. "Gregory House."

* * *

It was nine o'clock in the morning and Horatio already had a headache. He squeezed the bridge of his nose between two fingers and exhaled slowly.

"Okay," he said, and opened the first file. "Cassie Ripkin, twenty-three. Raped, shot twice in the head with a .45." He passed the file to Delko. "Melissa Andrade, twenty-two. Raped, shot twice in the head with a .45." He slid it across the table to Calleigh. "Mia Jenkins, twenty-four. Raped, shot twice in the head with a .45." He laid the file open on the table. "Apart from the way they were killed and the fact that they're all blonde, these girls have one thing in common."

There was silence while Delko and Calleigh scanned the files, and then both began simultaneously, "All the girls -"

Delko stopped, laughing. "You go ahead."

Calleigh gave a pretty smile. "Thank you." She looked at Horatio. "All the girls had therapy sessions with a Dr. Martin Pritchard."

"Then I think we need to talk to Dr. Pritchard." Horatio put on his sunglasses. "Let's go."

* * *

Martin Pritchard was a tall, classically handsome man with a clean jaw and striking green eyes. Horatio was momentarily stunned by the gregarious personality that seemed to fight for release from within the man's six foot four frame. "Are you comfortable? My secretary can get coffee if you'd like. Would you like coffee?"

"Doctor," Horatio said, hoping his calmness would somehow infect Pritchard and cause him to sit still for more than ten seconds. "I need to ask you a few questions about three of your patients...Cassie Ripkin, Mia Jenkins, Melissa Andrade."

"Yeah, but I can't tell you anything. Doctor-patient confidentiality." Pritchard grinned. "Have I seen you around before, Lieutenant? You look really familiar for some reason I can't shake. Have you ever been to Club Essence?"

Horatio had been there on opening night. "What we have to ask you doesn't have anything to do with their mental health or any problems they might have disclosed to you," he said. "Did the girls know each other?"

"Well, they were in separate therapy groups. I can't tell you what they did on their own time." Pritchard cocked his head. His grin was widening. "Club Canvas? Symbiosis?"

Pritchard was straying into dangerous territory here; Symbiosis was one of Miami's more popular gay clubs. Horatio, who went occasionally, ignored the question. "Where were you on Sunday night leading into Monday morning, Doctor?"

"I really couldn't say, I'd have to check my planner." Pritchard snapped his fingers. "That's it! Now I know where I've seen you." He pointed at Horatio. "Liquid."

Calleigh had finally become irritated enough to speak up. "Dr. Pritchard, this isn't a social call. We're on serious police business and it would be nice if you could kindly confine your answers to the matter at hand."

"Yeah," Delko said, "and we're gonna need that planner."

"Like now?" Pritchard asked.

"Yeah," Delko said again, going heavy on the sarcasm. "Like now."

Pritchard began rummaging through his desk drawers. Unfortunately, he didn't let up in his assault on Horatio's composure. "It was Liquid. I remember. It was back in April sometime, right? You were in VIP...with a hot guy to boot..."

Horatio, who was a VIP member of Liquid and whose heart was beginning to beat just a little too fast now, took the planner from Pritchard's hands. "Doctor, perhaps you should consider putting yourself on some of those medications you prescribe your patients."

"Would I also need an attorney?" Pritchard enquired, and leaned forward to peer into the planner. "So where does it turn out that I was? Come on, I'm as curious as anyone else here."

Horatio turned the pages. "Home asleep on Sunday, Club Canvas on Tuesday, Club Liquid on Thursday." He looked up. "You didn't specify a time here."

"I left Canvas a little after two, and I can't remember leaving Liquid at all." Pritchard smiled. "I'm sure I did, though, because I'm here now."

"Can anybody verify your presence on any of these days?" Calleigh asked.

"No to Sunday but yes to the other two. The owners of Canvas and Liquid will tell you I was there." Pritchard grinned again. "Are you sure you don't want some coffee?"

* * *

"I don't think I've ever met anyone that..." Calleigh shook her head. "I can't even find the word."

"Gregarious," Horatio supplied without looking up.

"Yes. Exactly."

"I thought he'd never shut up," Delko said. "Something about that strikes me as false. Nobody's that happy."

Horatio smiled. "Except Calleigh."

"Well, yeah. Except Calleigh." Delko grinned. "Calleigh's a hummingbird on six cups of coffee. But something's not right with this guy. I'll check his alibi."

Calleigh pursed her lips. "I'll check the registry and see if Pritchard owns a firearm."

Horatio raised an eyebrow. "I'll...wait patiently."

* * *

"Alibi checks out," Delko reported. "Well, sort of. The owners of Canvas are good friends of his, and the managers of Liquid are his buddies from college. They say he was definitely there all night, kicking back up in VIP. I'm going to get a couple of people I know who would have been guests that night, see if they saw him."

Horatio nodded. "Thank you, Eric. Calleigh?"

"Martin Pritchard owns a Colt .45." She shook her head. "I knew that man was bad news."

"We can think whatever we want, but we need hard evidence to make this case." Horatio stacked the case files. "Eric, Calleigh, see what you can get. Talk to the bouncers, dancers, guests. Find someone who says Martin Pritchard wasn't there."

* * *

"What are we looking for?" Alexx asked, looking down at Cassie Ripkin's body.

"Anything to give us a possible crime scene." Horatio was leaning down, his face so close to Mia Jenkins' hair that he thought he could still smell her shampoo. "They weren't killed in the dumpsters we found them in. Fibre, soil...I'll take whatever you can give me, Alexx."

"Eric checked her clothes. He didn't find any foreign substances." Alexx picked up Cassie's hand, checking her fingernails. "Clothing would be more likely to pick something up. Besides, I've autopsied these three girls already. You're clutching at straws, Horatio."

"Actually, I've found something better to clutch at." Horatio was staring at a tiny fibre trapped in the ends of Mia's hair. He caught it with the tweezers and held it up to the light.

Alexx looked bewildered. "What is it?"

Horatio turned it this way and that. It seemed to be purple, but beyond that he couldn't tell. "No idea. I'll get it to trace. Let me know if you find anything else."

* * *

"I spoke to three people who were in Canvas VIP all night. They say they saw Pritchard from about nine to eleven, and then nothing. He was next seen at one o'clock...apparently he'd showered." Delko folded his arms. "He did a similar thing at Liquid - left at quarter past eleven, didn't come back until half past one in different clothes."

Horatio nodded musingly. "Building the perfect alibi. Calleigh, what did you get on the fibre?"

"It's synthetic. The dye is called Persian violet. It's manufactured by the Tyne Fabric Company and used to make very expensive and exclusive carpets." Calleigh scanned her notes. "Only one store sells them. I gave them a call, and -"

"Let me guess," Horatio said. "They sold one to Martin Pritchard."

"He's gonna want to see a warrant," Delko pointed out.

"If he wants a warrant, we'll get one. Until then, we'll be at his house." Horatio held up the keys. "Coming?"

* * *

Surprisingly, Pritchard didn't ask for a warrant. He opened his door and let them in, and sat by on the couch looking most interestedly at their efforts. Which were, of course, in vain. There was no carpet. But Horatio knew this, because if there had been a carpet, he would not have let them in.

"Martin Pritchard's house does not contain a carpet made from fibres coloured with Persian violet," Calleigh said. The tone of her voice made it clear that she was annoyed. "Where does that leave us?"

"With nothing," Delko said disgustedly. "We have fibres that don't match anything in his house, and just his link to them as their therapist."

"This carpet is the key to our case. We find this carpet, we find our crime scene." Horatio stood up. "Mark my words, this isn't over."

* * *

Calleigh found him hunched in front of the computer. "Find anything?"

"Not ye -" Horatio stopped himself as a page came up on the screen. "Hello."

She leaned in to read over his shoulder. "Oh, would you look at that. Martin Pritchard owns another property. A house in West Palm Beach."

"And you know what that means." He pulled out his phone. "Eric. Horatio. Roadtrip!"


	9. Chapter 9

The house was beachfront property, a large bungalow with an expansive porch and outdoor pool. The windows were dark, but the lawn was neatly trimmed and the gates swung easily on the hinges with no creaking. It was quiet. Too quiet. Moving with the unconscious agility of a cat, Horatio drew his gun and ascended the steps.

Delko picked the front door lock and eased it open. From the first, Horatio knew there was nobody inside. But there had been recent activity; the floor was clear of dust, there were no signs of cobwebs. "This is where he does it," Delko muttered. "This is where he kills them."

Horatio checked the kitchen. "Corridor. Eric, take the right. I'll take the rooms on the left."

The first room, which was apparently a spare bedroom, told Horatio everything he needed to know. First of all, the floor had an expensive-looking purple carpet. Second of all, that carpet had bloodstains on it. Third of all, the room was a mess. Used condoms were strewn all over the furniture, and items had been knocked over in what had clearly been a fight.

"We're clear," Delko called.

"Eric, take a look at this." Horatio nodded to the bedroom.

Delko stopped in the doorway. "Jesus."

"We have our crime scene," Horatio said grimly, and snapped on a pair of gloves. "You start processing, I'll give the department a call and tell them to arrest Martin Pritchard right now." Ten seconds later, he said, "They're on their way."

Delko was snapping pictures. "Why would he leave it like this? He's not afraid of getting caught?"

"Maybe he's finished playing." Horatio was crouching, fingertips of one hand on the floor for balance, and collecting condoms with the other. "We have numerous biologicals. We have fingerprints. We have a carpet to match the fibres to." He shook his head. "I hope MDPD gets to Pritchard before he can go full-blown psycho on us."

"I'd ask you just how crazy you think this guy is," Delko said, "but I'm looking at his crime scene." He sighed and started rolling up the carpet.

The processing took just under an hour. They lifted fingerprints and numerous samples of bodily fluids. They recovered the duct tape he had used to bind the girls' hands, the roll he had taken it from and the scissors he had cut it with. They found clothing from all three victims.

Never before, Horatio reflected as he carried the bagged carpet out to the Hummer, had a single crime scene been so forthcoming. It was precisely that, however, that made him think that they were already too late.

His phone was ringing. He stripped off one glove and answered it. "Horatio." Calleigh said two words, and they made his blood run cold. "Get an APB out. I want a roadblock. I want police all over the roads. I want to know what car he took and I want to know where he's headed. I want his accounts frozen. He knows we know. He has nothing to lose."

Delko came out. "H, what's up?"

Horatio turned, sweating in the Miami sun. "He's gone," he said with barely controlled anger. He knew he was shaking, but he couldn't help it. He knew how this went. They would start a search for Pritchard and come up with nothing. Then a body would turn up. Then another. And Horatio would probably have to chase the man across all fifty states before justice would finally be done.

"He's gone?" Delko shoved the kits into the Hummer. He was clearly angry as well, and rightly so. "What do you mean he's gone?"

"I mean he's gone. By the time they got to his practice to arrest him, he was gone. His secretary had no idea where he was. They checked his house. The front door was wide open, his car was not in the driveway, the upstairs safe was open and there was only an empty box of ammunition in it." Horatio's jaw tightened. "Did we get everything?"

"Yeah, this was the last of it." Delko looked at the pile of evidence in the backseat and shook his head in loathing. "This isn't over, is it?

Horatio was already in the driver's seat. "It never is."

* * *

"You can't be serious."

House looked up to see Wilson standing in the doorway. "What can't I be serious about?"

"House, it's one in the morning." Wilson stepped into the office. "It's dark. It's cold. There are no patients. Why aren't you home?"

House chewed on his lower lip. "I haven't been sleeping."

"I can see that." Wilson paused, and squinted at him. "You were in those clothes yesterday. Wait a minute - have you been home at all since Wednesday morning?"

House checked his mental calendar. "Probably not," he admitted, and sighed. He shook a Vicodin out into the palm of his hand and downed it. His head hurt. "I'm tired, but I can't sleep. I know I'm hungry, but I don't feel like eating. If this is what being in love is like, I wish it'd go to hell because this isn't fun anymore."

Something in Wilson's eyes softened, if it was possible for Wilson's eyes to get any softer than they already were. He sat down. "You miss him."

"You think?"

"When did you last talk to him?"

"Saturday."

"House, it's Thursday. Well, no. Since it's one o'clock, it's actually Friday now."

"And?"

Wilson leaned over and took the phone off the hook. He held out the receiver. "Call him," he said simply. "You want to talk to him, you call him. That's how relationships work."

"Yeah, but -"

"He's not too busy for you."

"I wasn't going to say that," House said mulishly, putting the receiver back into the cradle. "I'm not a kid, Wilson. I don't need to hear his voice so I can get to sleep at night, that's ridiculous. I don't need him."

"You don't _want_ to need him." Wilson couldn't help but give a little smile. "I think I must point out that there is a fundamental difference between your wanting to not need him and the actual reality of the situation. You do need him. Now, nod and accept it. Come on. Nod..." Wilson reached across the desk and took House's head in his hands, moving it up and down. "Yes, nod...and accept it."

House made an irritated noise. "Oh, for God's sake. I can live my own life, thank you."

"You're at work at one in the morning. You haven't been home in two days. You haven't eaten or slept in I don't know how long." Wilson leaned forward. "You're not okay."

"You think I don't know that?" House's voice was soft. He put his head in his hands and exhaled stale breath that refracted off the desk and into Wilson's face. "I know I'm not okay. I'm in love. How can I ever be okay?"

Wilson got to his feet and took House by the arm. "You," he said firmly, "are coming home with me tonight. You're going to eat something and you're going to sleep and then you're going to take a sick day tomorrow and do it again. Are we clear?"

House had never seen Wilson take charge of anything quite like that before, and he couldn't help but be somewhat amused. His first instinct was to resist, but like it or not, he saw the logic in what Wilson was saying, and so he relented.

"Fine," he said. "On the condition that you don't cook."

"You get leftovers tonight and Chinese tomorrow." Wilson held out his hand. "Deal?"

House shook. "Deal."

"Good." Wilson pointed to the door. "Now, out. We'll take my car; I don't trust you to get on that bike and not fall off halfway."

House went uncomplainingly, but it was only as he limped to Wilson's car that he realized exactly how tired he was. There was a dull throbbing behind his eyes, and his hands were trembling. Food was sounding like a very good plan.

As it was, the drive to Wilson's apartment almost put House to sleep. Wilson was a steady driver who obeyed the speed limit and coasted to slow stops at traffic lights, and the lack of sudden movements lulled House into a light doze which only stopped when the engine cut off, and House opened his eyes to find them parked on the street outside the apartment building.

"Come on," Wilson said with curious gentleness. "We've got to get food in you before you can sleep."

They took the elevator up to the third floor. Wilson unlocked his apartment door, holding it open for House, who headed straight for the couch and poured himself into it. Wilson shook his head and went to get the remains of last night's fettuccini out of the refrigerator.

House accepted the food in silence and ate with surprising vigor. It was cold, but he didn't care. Wilson watched him eat, then brought out a blanket. "Brush your teeth tomorrow," he said dryly.

House barely managed a half-smile of gratitude before he stretched out on the couch and his consciousness dissolved into black. Just before he drifted off, however, he found himself wondering where Horatio was and what he was doing.

* * *

Horatio, at that moment, was seated on a stool in the lab, opening a box of ammunition and waiting for news.

"He's driving a red 2006 C6 Corvette convertible," Calleigh said, closing the door behind her. "We've got the license plate and so does every police department in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. By the time the order to freeze his accounts got out, he'd already withdrawn all the money." She sat down and put her fingertips to her temples. "Which means we have a serial killer on the loose with a .45, approximately one hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition, a car with a four hundred horsepower engine and somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars cash."

Delko's shoulders tightened. "We have got to catch this guy," he said. "H?"

Horatio put a fresh cartridge into his Glock and slipped four more into his pockets. He shrugged off his jacket and hefted a bulletproof vest. "Eric, get yourself into some body armour. We're going on a manhunt."

"Horatio," Calleigh began.

"Calleigh." He looked at her. "We need you here. That car will have GPS. You need to get in contact with the company and track him. Eric and I and half the state police will be out chasing shadows, so you're going to stay here and be my eyes. Okay?"

She seemed to fight herself for a few moments. "Keep your cell phones on," she said at last. "We've circulated his picture and it's all over the news, so someone's bound to call in a sighting. Between those and the GPS signal, we should be able to keep track of him."

"I don't want to keep track of him," Horatio said. "We've got to be one step ahead at all times. Preferably two steps." He slid the gun into his shoulder holster. "Eric?"

Delko had managed to get into the body armour, and he was stocking up on extra ammunition. "Yeah, I'm set. Just...give me a minute, will you?"

Horatio nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. The corridors were quiet. The word was out, and all of Miami was on the alert. There was a killer on the road.

Delko emerged, clearing his throat. He squared his shoulders, and lifted his head. "Where to?"

"We hit the road," Horatio said. "We hit the road and keep the lines open for Calleigh."

* * *

Miami was a mess. Six hours after the discovery of their gruesome crime scene, the streets were a swarm of police and members of the media. And the news reports that a serial rapist and murderer was out there made absolutely no difference to the partygoers. It was nine o'clock, and every nightclub was in full swing.

"This is a buffet," Delko said, nodding to the nightclubs as they cruised past. "If he's still going for young and blonde, he might as well stay in Miami."

"No, he'll run," Horatio said with conviction. "He wants the chase. He's playing with us."

"You how many people are potential targets for this guy?" Delko shook his head. "How can we stop him, H? How do you match wits with a psychopath?"

"He's not a psychopath, Eric. He's a sociopath." Horatio's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Psychopaths kill people and don't know it's wrong. Sociopaths kill people and know it's wrong and they love it anyway."

"H," Delko said quietly after a few moments. "I'm afraid. Afraid we're not gonna get him in time. But, more than that...just afraid."

"Me too, Eric. Me too."

* * *

The reports of the first body came in early the next morning, around five o'clock. Lorraine White, twenty, blonde, raped and shot twice in the head with a .45, was found just inside the border of Georgia. Nobody needed to see ballistics tests to know it was Pritchard, but everyone asked how in the hell he had made it to Georgia without being picked up. Sightings of him continued all the way through Georgia to South Carolina. Four days, and they couldn't catch him.

Horatio and Delko chased him. They followed up on the sightings, questioned the people. By all reports, he was still driving the convertible, out of which he had ripped the GPS. Roadblocks were set up on every major artery. State police canvassed everywhere. The FBI came in. No progress was made.

Arlene Delacroix. She was twenty-four and blonde, and the MO was the same. She'd been dumped in the bushes in an upscale residential area of Georgia that hadn't been preparing itself to meet the new breed of killer that Miami had unleashed. The public reeled in shock. Horatio and Delko knew that Pritchard was moving north, and they moved up to meet him.

They almost caught him in North Carolina after following another murder in South Carolina. Delko had glimpsed the distinctive red convertible on the I-77, and they had radioed ahead to the police before attempting a high-speed chase. But in rush hour traffic, and given the slow-moving local police, Pritchard had slipped past. All they found was the body of Renee Dahmer, eighteen and blonde, and a handwritten note that said, 'On my way to New York. I hear the girls are sweet up there. Coming along for the ride?' And Horatio had cursed in language Delko had never heard him use before.

Two more bodies led them through Virginia, driving on the roads he had driven before, and hoping against all hope to catch him before he got any further. Horatio and Delko practically lived in the Hummer, sleeping in shifts and eating while driving. They stopped at gas stations for bathroom breaks and food, and that was it. As soon as a report came through, as soon as Calleigh called with a body or a sighting, they were on their way again.

Pritchard killed one woman in Maryland, and another in Pennsylvania. Then there was a lull for two days, which had Horatio and Delko totally confused. They decided to rent a double room in a motel, and finally got a decent night's sleep for the first time in a week. A week of living out of a car, of bathing once in two days. And then Calleigh called. Things had taken an unexpected turn.

Pritchard was in New Jersey. And his latest victim was a man.

* * *

Horatio, driving the Hummer with single-minded purpose, barely realized he was in New Jersey until the landscape began to look familiar. The latest victim was still young and blond and raped and dead, but apparently Pritchard was no longer fussy about gender. Horatio, whose entire body was tight - and had been tight for a week - now took to clenching his jaw.

And then they found the car.

* * *

It happened completely by accident. Delko was driving slowly, working his way around the residential areas, when he saw it. Once, it had been a brilliant red, but the fenders were muddy and there were clumps of unidentifiable stuff on the license plate and the tyres. It was just sitting there, empty, with the top down and the driver's side door open.

"H." Delko reached over and shook Horatio, who awoke instantly. "H, that's his car."

Horatio drew his gun automatically. "Pull over."

The surrounding area was clear, and at the first glance there was no sign of anything even remotely suspicious. But the reason the Corvette had been abandoned was evident; it had two flat tyres. There was blood on the driver's seat.

"You think it's his?" Delko asked. "You think he's injured?"

"I don't know." Horatio pointed to it. "Process the car. Those tyres look like they were slashed. See what you can get. I'll check the area. If he's injured, he won't get far."

Horatio moved off, gun held down, and began to scan the grass for footprints, for a blood trail. He walked slowly, straining his eyes, and then he saw it. A drop of red on a blade of green grass. Slight depressions where feet had trod.

Horatio moved into a slow jog, following the flattened grass and the blood through the park. It was a big park, and it must have been easily five full minutes before he neared the other side. The blood trail wasn't thickening - if anything, it was disappearing - meaning that whatever injury Pritchard had, it wasn't serious.

The first thing Horatio saw in the distance was a tall man in a bloody white shirt with one hand pressed to his side. The second thing he saw was a tall man sitting on a park bench. There was a cane leaning against the bench.

Horatio broke into a run.

* * *

House had taken a day off, as per the advice of Wilson, who had told him that if he showed his face in the hospital, he would be sedated and driven back home. But House wasn't home sleeping, as he should have been. It was a painful day for his leg, so he'd taken the car down to the park, where he was sitting on a park bench and trying not to think about his life.

He'd been there about half an hour when the man had come up. He was running through the park, not in too much of a hurry but obviously in pain from what looked like a knife slash in his side that was shaking blood droplets from him with every step. The doctor in House was concerned by the wound but noted that it wasn't fatal; the man in House only thought, _damn, he's good-looking_.

The man was tall, taller than House, with thick dark hair and mineral green eyes. He had long legs and what promised to be great shoulders beneath the thin white shirt. He came to a halt not far from House, bending over to put his hands on his knees.

"Hi," he said, grinning. "Nice day. Sunny."

"If you like the sun," House said noncommittally. Something was gnawing at the back of his mind. This man looked familiar. Where did he know him from? He wasn't a patient, that was for sure. Did he live in the area?

"I like the sun," the man said. "I like all kinds of weather, you know? We get a lot of sun where I'm from." He straightened up again, wincing as he pressed one hand to his side. "Don't ask. Some punk with a knife. I took care of him."

"It doesn't look too bad," House told him. "You should be fine in a few days."

The man grinned again. "I'm not so sure I have that long. Hey, you know any hot blondes?"

Just as House's brow furrowed and he thought about opening his mouth to ask the man what in the hell he was talking about, a voice sounded from not far off. It yelled, "Pritchard!"

And House's blood ran cold, because now he knew where he remembered the man from. It was the news. Miami news, that he watched religiously to keep himself at least partially informed of what Horatio was up to. He remembered seeing this man's face. Martin Pritchard. He had killed, at last count, twelve people. Counting the punk with the knife, that would make it thirteen.

Pritchard turned towards the voice. There was a manic smile on his face as he reached behind him into the waist of his pants. "I was waiting for you," he called. "You took long enough, Lieutenant!"

House's jaw dropped as he saw that the figure sprinting across the park with the gun in its hands was Horatio. He knew he should do something, but he was too shocked to move.

Horatio skidded to a halt, braced himself, feet apart, and brought up the gun in both hands. "Drop it, Pritchard. Put it down. It's over." He was breathless from his run, panting out the words.

"No way," Pritchard said, and now he was holding a gun as well. "I'm not finished yet. Come on, do you have any idea how much fun this is? Thirteen, Lieutenant Caine. Thirteen's not a lucky number." His eyes glittered, and he grinned. "Let me do one more, huh? Pretty please?"

Horatio's eyes never wavered from Pritchard's. "Put it down now or so help me God I _will_ shoot you."

"Then shoot me!" Pritchard cried, laughing. "Shoot me, you redheaded son of a bitch! Because I will never stop, you get that? I will _never_ stop!"

House had never seen someone get shot before, even though he himself had collected two bullets in the past, and it stunned him. Horatio pulled the trigger, and the next thing House saw was Pritchard spin around as the bullet impacted his shoulder. Horatio put another bullet between his ribs, and he stumbled and went down. Blood was bubbling from the wound in his chest.

Just as Horatio began to lower his gun, House saw Pritchard's .45 lift slightly. Horatio's hand snapped up and his finger tightened on the trigger, but not quickly enough.

House, who had been looking at Pritchard's hand when everything went to hell, would later swear that the man had pulled the trigger only once. Three reports rang out. Pritchard's head smacked into the asphalt of the sidewalk, a small dark hole over his right eye, and Horatio arched backwards in a sick kind of ballet before he fell back on the grass.

House made the briefest call of his life to inform the hospital - which was two miles away and therefore the closest source of medical help - that he was bringing in a GSW and needed an operating room stat, and then hauled ass over to Horatio.

Blood was everywhere. There were two distinct wounds, one in the abdomen and one in the upper right chest that would not have missed the lung. House took in all of this in a split-second glance, and then dropped to his knees. "Horatio! Horatio. Stay with me."

He got a groan in response. House stripped off his jacket and wadded it up against Horatio's chest. "Hold this tight." He moved Horatio's hands, pressing one against each wound, and then hauled the man to his feet. There was so much adrenaline in House's veins that he felt as though his blood was on fire.

House half-carried, half-dragged Horatio to the car and dumped him in the passenger seat before climbing into the driver's side and tearing out of there so fast he was sure he'd left some of his tyres on the road. "Horatio." House glanced over at the redhead, whose eyes had glazed over but who was pressing House's jacket against him for everything he was worth. "Horatio! What is your name? What is the date? What is the capital of Assyria?"

"Assyria?" Horatio wheezed.

"Just making sure you're paying attention. Hang on, okay? You just hang on." House spun around a corner, tyres screeching in protest, and pulled into the ambulance area. Wilson was there, along with three nurses and a surgeon House knew as Rickman.

House and a nurse lifted Horatio out of the car and onto the stretcher, and then all of a sudden Rickman had taken over, shouting instructions and setting up an IV even as they wheeled the gurney down the hall. House made as if to follow, but Wilson gripped his upper arm. "House. _House_."

House turned, wide-eyed. His entire body was shaking, and his leg was in the most intense pain he had ever felt. Dimly he realized he had left his cane leaning against the park bench.

"House." Wilson was leading him into the hospital. "House, what happened?"

House opened his mouth, and shut it. He took a deep breath and tried to stop shaking, but it didn't work. He sank into the nearest chair, took a Vicodin, gripped his knees tightly, and tried to explain. "There was a killer. The one from Miami that everyone's been looking for all up the east coast. I was just sitting there."

"Where?" Wilson asked softly.

"Park. Just sitting there. He walked up, he was bleeding, he asked me if I knew any hot blondes. I recognized him from the news, I watch Miami news. And then Horatio was there. He'd been tracking the killer through the park. Pritchard. His name was Pritchard."

"House."

"Yes. I didn't move. Pritchard started laughing, said he wasn't finished, that he was enjoying himself. Horatio told him to drop his gun. He didn't, and he shot him. They shot each other." House wiped his face with one hand, not realizing he was spreading blood on it. "Strange...two bullets. He pulled the trigger once."

Wilson was clearly worried about him. "House, you're in shock. You're not going to remember things clearly."

"I remember it fine. He pulled the trigger once. I was looking at his hand. But there were two shots, two bullets, two wounds." House looked up suddenly. "He's going to die, isn't he?"

"House." Wilson held House's wrists, then decided to take a chance. "Greg."

The use of the name made House stiffen. He looked down at Wilson's hands. "Lung and abdomen," he said, suddenly crisp and matter-of-fact. "The odds aren't good."

"Well, you know Horatio better than I do. But from what you've told me, he's strong. I'm hoping he'll be fine."

"You hope," House said bitterly.

"That's all we can do." Wilson put a gentle hand on House's shoulder. "Sit here. I know it sounds ludicrous, but try to stay calm. I'll see if I can get his things for you."

* * *

Wilson emerged with an armful of clothes and personal effects. House piled everything on the seat next to him, then pawed through them until he found the shirt. It was soaked with blood and torn in two places, but he held it to him like a child's teddy bear. It broke Wilson's heart to see.

From somewhere in the pile, a phone was ringing. House picked it up. "Hello?"

The female voice on the other end sounded surprised and instantly concerned. "Hello, I'm CSI Calleigh Duquesne. I'm trying to reach Lieutenant Horatio Caine. Who is this?"

"Calleigh." House closed his eyes. "You don't know me. I'm Doctor Gregory House. Listen...Pritchard is dead."

"Martin Pritchard is dead?"

"Yeah."

"So where is Horatio?"

"Horatio's been shot," House whispered. "He's in surgery now. Are you in Miami?"

"Yes, I'm in Miami." The concern had metamorphosed into barely concealed terror. "How serious is it?"

House swallowed tightly. "It's serious. You should catch the next flight. Is there anyone else closer by that I can call?"

"CSI Eric Delko, I'll give you his phone number." She called out the digits, and House repeated them to Wilson, who hopefully committed them to memory. "Do you think he's going to die?" she asked.

"I don't know," House said, hugging the bloody shirt. "It's up to him now."

* * *

Delko was a tall, muscular bundle of nerves who had a bloody tissue pressed to his left nostril. "Horatio Caine," he demanded of Wilson as soon as he hit the waiting room. "Where is he?"

"He's still in surgery," House said from the chair he was still occupying. "You must be Eric."

"CSI Eric Delko." Delko held out a hand, and House shook.

"Doctor Gregory House."

"There are a couple things I don't understand," Delko said, "so I'd like you to explain, if you can. You said Pritchard was dead."

"He is." House would have said more, but he saw that Delko's eyes had suddenly fallen on the stack of Horatio's belongings on the chair, and on the shirt that he was holding.

"These are his things. You know him."

House nodded wordlessly.

"And I know you. You were in Miami, at that club, when we found Leo von Damme. You were our witness." The gears in Delko's big, handsome head were turning. "You're the doctor from out of state," he said slowly. "You're...you're the one he's been seeing."

House nodded again.

Delko sat back in the chair, obviously overwhelmed, and dabbed at his nose again. He looked down the corridor to the closed doors of the operating theatre, up at Wilson, who was standing silently by like some sort of guardian angel that House was incredibly grateful for, then finally back at House.

"Well," he said. "I guess I should reintroduce myself." He held out his hand again. "I'm Eric."

House gave a tentative smile. "I'm...still House."

"Nobody calls him by his first name," Wilson said, suddenly entering the conversation. "It's like an anathema. I've been his best friend for twenty years and even I don't get the privilege of using Gregory." He smiled at Delko, who gave an awkward smile in return. "Doctor James Wilson, oncologist. Anyway, I know you have a lot to discuss. I'm on my way to the cafeteria. Can I get you anything?"

"Coffee would be a good idea," Delko said with a half-laugh.

"Coffee it is." Wilson pointed at House. "I know what you want, so don't bother telling me. I'll be back."

House watched the oncologist's back recede down the corridor and wondered what in the hell he would ever do without Wilson. "The shooting," he said, and Delko stilled to listen. "I watch the Miami news. I knew there was a manhunt, I knew Horatio was a part of it. I kept track of it. Twelve bodies. No, thirteen. I think he killed someone else today, some guy who cut him."

Delko looked like he couldn't believe it himself. "Thirteen murders over eight states."

"I was in the park. Pritchard came up. He was bleeding from where he'd been cut. He asked me if I knew any hot blondes. He was friendly. I couldn't believe it was the guy I'd seen on television, the guy who was raping and killing all those people. Then Horatio came up. He was following Pritchard."

"Yeah. I was processing the car, he went after Pritchard. Both of us totally forgot about the body armour."

"Well, he showed up, saw the guy...then everything just went crazy. Guns came out. I was too surprised to move. Horatio shot him twice, he went down. Then...Pritchard shot him from the ground. One trigger pull, two bullets."

Delko leaned forward. "You're sure about that? He only pulled the trigger once?"

"Yeah. I wondered about it." House looked up. "Does that happen?"

"Rarely. It's called sympathetic discharge. It happens when another bullet is already partially chambered, and it's fired from the gun as well as the next bullet. One trigger pull, two bullets." Delko paused, finally slipping the bloody tissue from his nose into a pocket. "And you brought H to the hospital."

House nodded.

"How is he?" Delko asked softly. "I mean, you're a doctor. You've gotta have some idea. You know where he was shot, you know the range, the trajectory of the bullets. How are his odds?"

House shook his head. "I don't know. There are a lot of variables. If it was just some random kid I'd say the odds aren't good, but...I know Horatio. He has a better chance at this than anyone."

Delko nodded. "I'd better call Calleigh," he said, and stood up, pulling out his cell phone and moving a little further down the hall.

A sandwich soared into House's lap, and he looked up in surprise to see Wilson standing there, holding a tray with three cups of coffee. "Eat it," the oncologist said, handing him a cup and taking one for himself. "It'll probably taste incredibly good right about now."

House unwrapped the sandwich and eyed it. "Reuben, dry, hold the pickles. You know me so well." He took a bite. "And it's actually all right today."

Wilson sat down next to House. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I'll tell you when I know," House said tersely. "Wilson, I need you to do me a favour."

Wilson braced himself. "What?"

"I need you to go into that operating theatre and to give me some information. I need to know how he is." House looked up. His eyes were desperate. "Jimmy. Please."

Wilson tried manfully to resist the awesome powers of persuasion that were House's to command and failed most astoundingly. "I'll see what I can do," he said at last. "I can't promise you anything, I don't know that Rickman will even give me the time of day. But I'll try."

House nodded and stared into his coffee as Wilson got up and headed for the doors. Delko sat down in the chair on the other side of House. "She's at the airport. Her plane leaves in an hour. She said you told her to fly out."

"I thought he'd want you both here," House said awkwardly. "You're important to him."

"Where's Dr. Wilson?"

"I asked him to see if he could get anything out of the surgeons." House tilted his head back against the wall and exhaled. He was beginning to remember part of the reason he didn't like to be close to people. Being close meant worrying. It meant stress. It meant doing exactly what he was doing now when bad things happened.

"Did you call the police?" Delko asked suddenly. "About the shooting? Somebody's going to need to pick up his body."

"And the punk who knifed him," House said. "No, I didn't call them. I really wasn't thinking about Pritchard at the time, you know?"

"I'm going to need you to tell me where it happened. It's a crime scene, I'll have to process it. The sooner the better, before people walk all over it."

"Chances are the police beat you to it," House said. "That side of the park is a fairly built-up area. Somebody would've heard the shots and called the cops. It's probably all over the news by now."

"Then there'd be no need for me to head out there." Delko settled back into the chair. "Tell you the truth, I couldn't leave now if I tried."

House nodded. "I know the feeling."

Wilson was walking down the corridor. He came to a halt in front of them. "Still in surgery," he said. "They've got a bullet out, they've repaired some of the damage to his internal organs, they're working on the other bullet. The nurse wouldn't tell me more."

"The bullets must have tumbled," House mused. "If they fragmented..." He left the sentence unfinished, but he couldn't leave the thought unfinished. If the bullets had fragmented, Horatio's insides would have been torn to shreds. And that would mean almost certain death.

"It should be another hour. The fact that he's still alive is a good thing." There was a beeping noise, and Wilson checked his pager. "House..."

"You have patients." House waved a hand and took a sip of the coffee. It was perfect the way Wilson made it, too strong and too sweet. "Go on. I'll be fine."

"You're sure?" Wilson hesitated. "I can stay if you need me."

"I'll be fine," House said firmly. "Go."

* * *

It was bordering on an hour when Rickman came out of the theatre, his scrubs blood-splattered. House and Delko were immediately on their feet, and House limped forward to bring Rickman to a surprised halt, one finger jabbed into his chest.

"Before you say anything, shut up," House said, and Rickman's jaw clicked shut. "I'm going to ask you three questions, and I want you to answer them immediately and honestly. Is he alive?"

"Yes," said Rickman.

"Is he going to live?"

"Yes."

Delko sagged visibly in relief. House only narrowed his eyes. "What's wrong with him? I ask this because if nothing were wrong with him there wouldn't have been all this secrecy and lack of information."

"There was a lot of internal damage," Rickman said heavily. "He was shot twice, and both bullets tumbled but remained whole. So there's going to be a fairly long recuperation period, but I see no reason why he shouldn't make a full recovery with no loss of function. It's just...it was touch and go for a while there. We put five units of blood in him. If those bullets had fragmented on impact..." Rickman let the sentence hang in the air, then tilted his head at House. "Aren't you going to ask if you can see him?"

House snorted. "Why would I bother to go through the formal process of asking permission to see him when we both know that you're going to say no and I'm going to go see him anyway?"

Rickman gave a wry smile. "Good point. Anyway, he hasn't woken up yet."

"That's fine." House nodded to the surgeon as he walked off, and then turned to Delko. "I guess you heard that."

"Yeah." The CSI was checking his watch. "I'd call Calleigh, but she'd be on the plane already. I'll tell her when I meet her at the airport. Are you gonna see him?"

"Yep. I'm going up there now. I can probably sneak you in for a couple minutes." House felt around in his pockets and pulled out the bottle of Vicodin. He tipped one into his palm and swallowed it, and as expected, Delko bit.

"Painkiller? I noticed your limp..."

"Yeah," House said, heading towards the elevator. "I had an infarction - a blood clot which led to the death of part of my thigh muscle. It was seven years ago, but it doesn't matter. It still hurts. It'll always hurt. So I take painkillers. I also usually walk with a cane, but I left that at the park."

"I'll go down to the police station in a little while and see if I can get that back for you. So everything was left at the cri - the park? The guns too?"

"Everything. I didn't touch anything except Horatio." House stepped out of the elevator and scanned the hallway. "Okay, low traffic. You're literally only going to get a couple minutes, though."

"That's fine," Delko said. "I just need to know he's all right."

They walked down the corridor, peering through the windows. Most of the rooms were darkened and empty, so it wasn't too difficult to find Horatio's. Delko went in at once, and House stood mutely outside, one hand pressed against the glass.

Horatio was still unconscious from the anaesthetic. He was pale; even his freckles seemed to have faded into the dull grey that was his skin. There were too many tubes in him. Delko leaned over the bed and studied Horatio's face, touched his hand lightly. House watched Delko's wide jaw flex, and then the CSI was outside.

"I didn't think it was gonna be that bad," he said. His voice wavered. "I mean, I knew, but..."

"Looks are deceiving," House told him softly. "He's going to be fine. Look, if you want to get some rest, now would be the time. You can get almost six hours in before you go to the airport to pick up Calleigh. You need somewhere to sleep?"

"H and I have been sleeping in the Hummer. I'll be okay there." Delko hesitated. "If anything happens, if anything changes..."

"I'll call you," House said. "I have his phone, your number will be on it."

"Okay." Delko nodded. "Thanks, man."

House slipped into the room and was not comforted by the steady beeping of the machines. Medically, the fact that Horatio was stable was supposed to be a good thing, but all House could think about was the bang of the gun and the blood exploding from Horatio's chest as the bullet had hit.

House hovered over the bed, scanning Horatio's face for any sign of consciousness. His eyelids didn't flicker; he was still out. And House, who had always sneered at the practice of people speaking to coma patients or patients under anaesthetic, eased himself into a chair and whispered, "Horatio."

He took the limp hand awkwardly. "Horatio, it's...it's Greg." There was no response, which was what he had expected. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I just wanted to tell you that you're going to be all right. And...and that I love you. That's all." He leaned forward and kissed Horatio's fingers, then picked himself up and left the room before the threatening tears could spill from his eyes.

* * *

It took another half an hour and about thirty-two more checks on Horatio before House became suspicious about the fact that there were no ducklings pestering him. So rather than be grateful for it, he took the long, slow limp to Wilson's office and demanded to know what the oncologist had done.

Wilson, amused, said, "I told them today was your day off and that you were in the hospital because a friend was injured and that if they so much as fell in your line of vision you'd never let them forget it."

House was impressed. "And that worked?"

"Of course it did." Wilson snorted. "Cameron was concerned, naturally, but I managed to talk her out of it. They've been sneaking around all day. It's really quite funny. Chase has been checking around corners with a mirror."

House laughed. "I'd pay to see that, but then again it would defeat the purpose. Anyway, I'm going back up to the ICU. Horatio should be awake by now."


	10. Chapter 10

Horatio was in fact awake, or rather, just opening his eyes. He felt drunk, and there was a dull pain throbbing everywhere from his neck to his hips. He took stock of the situation - he was in a hospital, hooked up to a bunch of monitors and tubes. The grogginess made his memory hazy, but he knew from where he was that he had been shot. Probably more than once.

And then House was there, a tall blur with beautiful blue eyes and incredibly gentle hands that covered his. "Horatio," he said huskily, and cleared his throat. "It's okay. Pritchard is dead. You've been shot, but you're going to be all right. They had to intubate for the surgery. Don't try to talk."

Horatio tried to form some kind of grip on House's fingers, but his hand refused to obey him, instead just giving a weak twitch. His eyelids slid shut, and he drifted off again into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

When next he opened his eyes, he was less groggy but in more pain. At some point the tube had been removed from his throat - he knew he'd have to have been awake for that but he couldn't remember it - and he was breathing on his own. If he concentrated, he could isolate and identify the two main points of agony in his body. One in the abdomen, and one in the upper right chest. Two bullets.

"Horatio."

He turned his head a little and saw House sitting in a chair by the bed. The doctor looked terrible, with dark circles under his eyes and new lines on his face, but to Horatio he was the most welcome sight in the world. Horatio swallowed, winced at the soreness of his throat and managed, "Hey..."

House took Horatio's hand. "How are you feeling?"

Horatio tried to smile. His lips were dry. "I've been better."

"Pain?"

"I have enough."

House smiled. "Ass," he said in an oddly emotional tone.

Horatio rolled his eyes around the room to try to take in his environment in slightly greater detail. His gaze fell on the peaks and valleys of his heartbeat on the monitor, and he looked back at House. "I thought I was dead."

House's fingers tightened on Horatio's. "So did I."

"Greg. If you knew you were dying -"

House shook his head desperately. "Horatio, please."

"- if you had twenty-four hours left on this earth...if today was your last day..." Horatio gripped House's hand fiercely. "How would you spend it?"

House didn't hesitate. "With you."

Horatio closed his eyes and let that wash over him. "You mean that?" he asked softly.

House seemed to understand that the moment did not call for a snarky comment and thus did not make one. "There's nowhere else worth being," he said simply. "The only reason my life makes sense is because you're here. With me. You're...you know...you're it. You're the one."

Horatio smiled, and let a moment pass before he asked, "What happened at the park?" House's explanation was swift and to the point, and filled in the gaps in Horatio's memory admirably. "So Eric knows what happened? He and Calleigh?"

"I told them, yes." House paused. "He knows about us."

Horatio let out a breath. "Oh."

"I'm sorry. I know how you feel about people knowing, I just -"

"Greg," Horatio said gently. "Eric's not stupid. He was going to figure out. I'd hoped it would have been sooner rather than later, but it doesn't matter. This is a good time. Maybe it took being shot for me to realize, but..." Horatio took a deep breath and winced when it hurt. "I want us to stop dancing around this. We're not in high school anymore. I want this to be out in the open."

House leaned forward and kissed Horatio's hand. The scratchiness of his chin and his general condition told Horatio that House had been having a hard time of it recently. "Calleigh's on her way," House said quietly. "Eric's going to pick her up from the airport in a few hours. He was here earlier, I sent him to get some sleep. I think maybe I shouldn't be here when they come back."

"Greg." Horatio was making an effort to sound strong. Instead he only sounded breathless. "I want you to be here. You have to be here. How better to show them how close we are?"

House shifted in the chair, then sighed. "Okay. I'll be here. Are you in pain?" Horatio gave him a look that hopefully communicated the stupidity of the question. "Is it bad enough for an epidural?" House asked. "I can get one done for you. It'd probably be best if you have it for at least the first forty-eight hours while your organs put themselves back together."

Horatio couldn't help but be alarmed. "How bad is it?"

"I wasn't present for your surgery," House admitted, "but Rickman - he's the surgeon who has his hands in your chest - said things were a little shaky for a while. You are, however, expected to, and I quote, 'make a full recovery with no loss of function'." House gave a wan smile. "You're going to be fine, Horatio."

"Okay." Horatio's eyelids were suddenly heavy. He closed his eyes, then pried them open again, with some difficulty. "I'm going to go to sleep now, if that's all right."

"That's fine," House said. "You go ahead and sleep."

"Will you stay?"

"Of course I will."

* * *

By the time House woke up, it was dark. He'd fallen asleep in the chair, holding Horatio's hand, his head nestled into the redhead's side. Horatio was awake, and the reason for that was that Delko and a woman with long blonde hair were coming into the room.

Delko put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, you all right?"

"Yeah, I fell asleep." House shook his head to clear it, and held out his hand to the woman. "I'm Doctor House. You must be Calleigh. I'd stand, but...long story."

Calleigh shook his hand crisply. "CSI Calleigh Duquesne. I remember you from the Leo von Damme case." She had a Southern accent. Louisiana, House thought. Her attention shifted off of him and she looked down at Horatio. "Hey, handsome."

House's insides knotted for no reason, and Delko's big hand tightened comfortingly on his shoulder. "She doesn't know," he said softly. "I thought you and H would do a better job of telling her."

House nodded. "Thank you."

"How are you feeling?" Calleigh was asking Horatio.

"I'm okay." Horatio smiled. It was a little more convincing now that he had roughly another six hours of sleep in him. He looked down at House. "If you hadn't been there..."

"But I was there," House said quietly. "That's all that matters."

Calleigh looked blank for a moment, then said, "I spoke to the police here and explained what Eric had told me happened. They said they'd processed the crime scene and that the story fit with what they found, but that someone will need to take a statement from you." She smiled. "I volunteered."

"Oh," Delko said, putting a hand to his forehead. "I brought you something."

House was nonplussed. "Me?"

"Yeah." Delko grinned, went outside, and came back holding House's cane. "I told you I'd go down to the station and pick it up, remember?"

House took the cane. Generally, he didn't like people - he was a misanthrope even on a good day - but it took more than he had not to like Delko. House smiled. "Thank you."

"Eric," Calleigh said. "I'm going to take the statement from Horatio. Would you mind doing the doctor?"

Delko's eyes widened slightly. "Sure, no problem." He nodded to House. "Come on."

* * *

In the corridor, House had just finished with his statement and Calleigh emerged from the room. The expression on her face told him something was wrong. She smiled brightly, then abruptly turned to Delko. "Eric, can I talk to you a second?"

They moved further down the corridor, and House headed into the room. He stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at Horatio, and said, "You told her."

"It came out in the course of giving the statement," Horatio told him. "You got the easy CSI - Eric already knew."

House squinted. "You put...us...in the statement?"

"No," Horatio said with an unspoken 'duh'. "Calleigh asked questions. It's what she does. She wanted to know why I reacted the way I did when Pritchard was already wounded and I had no known reason to fear for your life...because all his victims were young. So I had to explain."

"Great." House groaned. "She's going to kill me."

"That's not what she's concerned about," Horatio said quietly. "She got a call from Miami. They're asking me to consider early retirement."

House's eyebrows shot up. He sat down abruptly. "They're what?"

"I've been stabbed twice in the course of duty, now I've also been shot twice." Horatio winced at pain with which House was familiar, having been shot himself. "It's like honourable discharge. I've been a great asset, our solve rates are second to none, all of that. But I've trained a great team and they should be able to manage without me if perhaps I would like to think about dropping out of the game."

House thought about this. "So...what are you going to do?"

"I asked Calleigh to talk to Eric and see if they think they'll be able to get along without me." Horatio smiled. "And just so you know, if I'd never met you...I wouldn't even be entertaining this idea. If that means anything."

House reached for Horatio's hand. "It means something," he said. "It means a lot."

There was a knock on the door and Calleigh came in, all smiles. "Okay, I'm just going to go down to the station and give them those statements. Do you want me to come back after, or is it okay if Eric and I go book a hotel room?"

"Book the hotel room," Horatio said. "You both get some rest. I'll be fine here."

"Okay. We'll come back and see you tomorrow." Calleigh leaned over and dropped a light kiss on Horatio's forehead, and held out her hand to House. "It was nice meeting you, Dr. House."

"House," said Delko, who was behind her. "Just House."

"Right." She smiled again. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Delko nodded to them both. "See you guys."

Once they had gone, Horatio looked at House. "You look like hell."

"You say the sweetest things."

Horatio gave a weak laugh. "You should go home and get some sleep, Greg. I'll be okay. I'm in good hands. How long a recovery period am I looking at, by the way?"

"Easily a couple of months," House said. "About two weeks in the hospital, the rest of the time at home. You'll have to come in for check-ups and to get the dressings changed - I can do that for you. Do you want the epidural? You didn't say yes or no when I asked you earlier."

Horatio closed his eyes, probably trying to gauge his pain. "Yes," he said at last. "How are the side-effects?"

"Better than what you'd get with morphine. Little to no nausea, and you'll be more relaxed and clearheaded."

"Okay. I'll take the epidural."

"All right," House said. "Give me a few minutes, let me get some things together."

* * *

One epidural later, Horatio was sleeping comfortably and House went home to see if he could do the same. Of course, it didn't work. He ended up trying to clean Horatio's blood off his car seats (mostly futile) and then to wash it out of his clothes (again, mostly futile) before making himself a sandwich and playing a few games on his PSP. He was tired, but sleep wasn't going to come easily to him. He had too many things to think about.

When he had exhausted all his other options, he lay down in his bed and looked up at the ceiling. Thoughts raced through his head, images flashing behind his eyelids. The standoff in the park. Horatio with the gun. Pritchard on the ground, eyes still dancing with mad light. The way Horatio's body had been thrown backward by the impact of the bullets. The spray of blood from his chest.

House wiped his face. He was sweating. He glanced at the clock, the green numerals of which informed him that it was four in the morning. He got out of bed and started putting on clothes. No point being where you weren't needed.

* * *

House had taken all of two steps inside the hospital when he realized that Cameron was shadowing him. He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Was there something you wanted?"

"I heard about your friend," she said tentatively. "Is he okay?"

"He'll be fine," House replied, and stopped walking. "What are you even doing here?"

"I, um..."

"Do we have a patient?"

Cameron blinked. "No."

"Is Wilson here?"

"No!"

"Then..." House made a rolling gesture with his hand. "You are here for what reason exactly?"

"I wanted to make sure you were all right," she said meekly. "I didn't know you had friends aside from Jim - Dr. Wilson. This guy must be special."

House raised an eyebrow but decided not to either comment on Cameron's slip of the tongue or on her reference to Horatio. "I'm fine. Really. And if you want to get a couple hours sleep while you still can, now would be a perfect time, because I'm going to see my friend and you're not invited."

* * *

The next two weeks passed in a blur of doctors and analgesics and frequent visits from House. Horatio was in almost constant pain; he couldn't remember that being stabbed had hurt this much. House had explained the extent of his internal injuries - perforated intestine and liver, punctured lung – but all Horatio knew was that his painkillers didn't work as well as he would have liked.

"Okay," House said. "You've been discharged."

Horatio looked up. "What?"

"You've been discharged. You're free to go." House nodded to the wheelchair he'd brought in. "I know you've been dying to get out of here, so I've personally discharged you, not to mention taken responsibility for your checkups and the other medical things you're going to need." House removed the IV. "Come on. Let's get you out of here. Wait, take this first."

Horatio had been allowed to take short walks for the past week, so getting up and into the wheelchair wasn't that difficult. House wheeled him out of the ward and into the corridor, where Delko and Calleigh were waiting.

"H," Delko said, standing up. "How're you feeling?"

"I'm all right." It wasn't a lie, but not quite the truth either. "When's the wedding?"

Calleigh glanced down at the engagement ring on her wedding finger and smiled. "We've decided to wait until you're well enough to attend. Have you made a decision?"

Horatio took a deep breath, which hurt. "I'm going to take early retirement," he said at last. "If, of course, that's okay with you."

Delko and Calleigh exchanged looks. "You gonna stay in Miami?" Delko asked.

Horatio smiled. "Uh, no. I think I'll stay here. But I'll come back sometime, take a vacation, see how you're holding up in my absence. Personally, I think you'll be just fine. And I'll definitely be back for the wedding."

"I'll take good care of him," House said. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay." Calleigh smiled. "We'll walk you out."

* * *

They said goodbye to Calleigh and Delko in the parking lot and Horatio got into the passenger seat of the Corvette. He was beginning to feel sleepy from whatever House had given him in the ward. "Greg."

"Vicodin," House said, stowing the wheelchair and then settling into the driver's seat. "It makes you euphoric and sleepy. I'll make you coffee when we get home...well, unless you _want_ to sleep."

"I've spent two weeks in the hospital sleeping." Horatio probed one of the injury sites carefully. "Doesn't hurt as much. This thing acts fast."

"It's an opioid, that's what they're good for." House seemed to be making an effort to drive carefully – probably to reduce the pressure of the seatbelt on Horatio's chest. "This and the occasional shot of morphine keep my leg under control. How are you feeling otherwise?"

Horatio closed his eyes. The wind felt good on his face and in his hair. "How do I look?"

"I've definitely seen you look better." House slowed at a stoplight. "I'm ordering takeout tonight."

"Are those two sentences connected?"

"Yes, because you need real food. You look like –" House stopped himself. "Like you need food."

"Very smooth."

"Horatio," House said seriously. "You will be fine. I'll take care of you."

Horatio looked at him. "For how long?"

House smiled, tilting his head back to let the breeze ruffle his hair. "Always."

* * *

"Horatio..."

"This is your show, Greg." Horatio sat back on his ankles and looked down at him. The sunlight streaming in through the window gave his hair the fiery glow of embers. His blue eyes were dark, touched with grey, and House was well enough versed in Horatio's body language to know that meant desire. "What do you want?"

House let his eyes roam Horatio's torso, the pink scars where he had collected the bullets. He was still perhaps too slender, but he definitely looked better than he had a month ago lying in the hospital bed. And of course the fact that he was straddling House at the moment was very pleasant indeed.

"I don't want to –"

"No." Horatio held up one hand, as the other moved lightly on House's stomach. "Listen carefully to what I'm asking you. What. Do. You. Want?"

House didn't gave to consider that for long. He ran one finger along the waist of Horatio's pants, and felt the muscles jump at his touch. "I want to make love to you."

Horatio gave an infuriating smile. "How do you want me?"

"Christ, it's only been a month." House bracketed Horatio's hips with his hands, gaze still on the chest that hid God knows what injuries still. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You're not going to." That smile again, slow and sensual. Almost feral. "Again – how do you want me?"

House let out his breath in a whoosh. "On your back."

He was careful, so careful it hurt, but it was worth it. It was a coming together of bodies, a blending of souls, and House realized he probably preferred this position because it let him look into Horatio's eyes – something that was incredibly intimate and something that turned him on more than words could describe.

They spooned, House wrapping Horatio in a loose embrace. "You all right?"

Horatio tilted his head to allow a kiss to fall on his jaw. "I'm perfect," he murmured. "You complete me, you know that? You're the one."

House smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that."

A frown furrowed the freckled brow. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, just something I've been thinking about," House said, rubbing his stubbled chin against Horatio's temple. "But today's not the time. I'll tell you tomorrow. Promise."

But there was no point in promising, because Horatio was asleep.

* * *

"I'll make breakfast."

"Greg –"

House spun on him with a glare. "You haven't eaten since yesterday morning!"

"Greg," Horatio repeated patiently. "You can't fry an egg without setting off the smoke detector."

House paused. "I'll _buy_ breakfast."

"Good idea."

They ordered Chinese, which they ate in bed, and when House returned from disposing of the containers he saw Horatio was halfway through the sketch pad that always lay innocuously on the bedside table. House winced. Horatio had caught him drawing in it a few times, had even teased him about it, but had never once asked to see it.

Horatio stood there, head bowed. "Is this how you see me?"

House didn't know which sketch he was looking at, but it really didn't matter. They were all variations on the same – Horatio as House saw him, beautiful, serene, carelessly seductive. Whether drawn from a memory of Horatio laughing or sketched in situ as Horatio sat in silence on the couch, every page was damning. On every page lay House's heart for all to see.

"This is beautiful," Horatio said quietly.

"It's how I see you."

"What do you call this one?" Horatio turned the pad, and House saw a sketch of Horatio stretched out on the bed, rays of light dappling his body.

"_Gato en el sol_," House whispered.

"You think of me as a cat?"

"Well...you purr."

"I do?"

House smiled. "I'll show you."

* * *

The wedding was a quick and intimate affair in a tiny Catholic church, presided over by Delko's parish priest. Calleigh's father was there – sober, Horatio was pleased to see. He looked good; undoubtedly he was proud of his daughter.

Delko cut a fine figure in his Armani tuxedo. Horatio couldn't help but feel a paternal sense of pride as he looked at the young CSI. And Calleigh...Calleigh was radiant. Her face had that glow that pregnancy always seems to bring, and her gown was little more than a simple strapless dress, but Horatio thought he had never seen her look so beautiful. The only time he had ever seen anything close to that smile on her face was whenever she entered the gun vault at the lab, and he whispered his observation to House, who rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Standing in the church, Horatio felt calm. Peaceful. The serenity of the occasion was something he couldn't deny, especially as an Irish Catholic. He had drifted away from the church, but something always brought him back. It wasn't religion he needed. It was faith. If ever there were a time he had felt connected to God, this was it.

He looked at House, who had cleaned up as much as possible for the occasion. A crisp, tailored suit, with the sky blue tie that did wonderful things to his eyes. He had shaved. He smelled amazing.

House glanced at Horatio and shifted a little, clearly uncomfortable. Horatio could understand that. For one, he knew House didn't believe in God. For two, they both knew very well that the Catholic church – and Christianity on the whole – condemned them utterly for the mere fact that they loved each other.

Horatio took House's hand, applying gentle pressure to the doctor's fingers. "Isn't she lovely?" he whispered. "Aren't they both?"

House smiled. "They are," he said. "They are."

* * *

"Apartment hunting." House squinted. "You can't be serious."

"Why not?"

"Is there something wrong with the current living arrangements?"

Horatio looked around. "There's not much space."

"It's two people. How much space do you need?"

"More than this. Look...it's not that I necessarily want to live alone. It's just that you're not going to go buy somewhere bigger. So I have to have somewhere else to be sometimes."

"Horatio, everything happened here. You, me..."

"I know there's history here," Horatio said gently. "But it's also not big enough for two people. We're going to get in each other's way, step on each other's feet. Sooner or later I'm going to annoy the hell out of you."

"Doubt it," House said wryly. "Look, if you want to find somewhere else, that's fine. But I think that's going to retard this development of this relationship exponentially."

"Maybe if it starts slower, it'll last longer." Horatio folded his arms and tilted his chin up, daring House to object. "Is this okay with you?"

House sighed and let go of the ring in his pocket. "It's fine."

* * *

Horatio found a place a five-minute drive from House's, and so the courtship began. House fully agreed with Horatio's idea about taking things slowly in theory, but he wasn't at all pleased with it in practice. There were times when he was in no mind at all to go slowly. Which was pretty much all the time as of recently.

He was just getting a beer out of the refrigerator when the door unlocked. House leaned against the counter with feigned casualness and took a long, slow drink.

Horatio stopped dead in the doorway to the kitchen. "How did you get here?"

House lowered the beer, eyeing Horatio over it. "By osmosis."

Horatio turned back to the front door and looked down at the key in his hand. His expression was priceless; House was actually biting his tongue trying to keep a straight face. "The door was locked."

"The window wasn't." House gave a bright smile.

"There's no way you could have climbed through a window."

"You'd be surprised at what I can do," House said, taking the two bags of groceries from Horatio. He opened one, pulling out a carton of milk, and then stopped. "Oh, and you might want to clean up the glass before someone steps in it."

"You broke the –" Horatio stared. "I thought you said it wasn't locked."

"It wasn't," House said. "I realized that after I broke it."

Once he'd scraped his jaw off the floor, Horatio muttered something about how House might as well stay for dinner and shooed him so he could start cooking.

House, curled on the couch with GTA Vice City Stories on his PSP, grinned to himself and wondered which of them was really going to have to clean up the glass.


	11. Chapter 11

Half an hour later, when the smell of something wonderful had drifted into the living room, he wandered into the kitchen, where Horatio was stir-frying something unidentifiable. House's eyes lingered on Horatio's hair where it curled against the back of his neck. "Smells good."

Horatio straightened slightly, obviously surprised by the intrusion. "Oh, hey."

"Hey." House stepped into the kitchen and looked down over the redhead's shoulder into the pan. He inhaled lightly against Horatio's hair and instantly closed his eyes. His heart was racing; the man just exuded pheromones.

"Greg," Horatio said quietly. "If you stand any closer to me I will be in no frame of mind to cook dinner."

"Would that be a bad thing?" House murmured into Horatio's neck. The spatula hit the counter with a decisive crack, and House took a step back. "You're perfectly right, it would be a terrible thing."

Horatio shot him a sidelong glance that House couldn't gauge to be amused or otherwise. "I happen to be hungry."

"Which is completely understandable." House wandered around the kitchen, studying the cupboards and trying his hardest to ignore Horatio's presence. "Listen, I'm gonna step outside for a few minutes, okay?"

House went out to the porch and pulled up a chair. It was September, and it was getting cold. A light breeze stirred the dead leaves on the ground, the soft twitter of birdsong coming to his ears from the distance. House closed his eyes and felt his heartbeat slow, his blood pressure decrease. Strange how he had developed such a physical desire – no, not a desire, an _addiction_. He was addicted to Horatio. And it was more than an addiction now. It was a problem.

House shifted restlessly and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing his ankles. September. They hadn't made love since July. House shivered just thinking about it. He had never wanted anyone the way he wanted Horatio.

"Greg." A hand came down lightly on his hair and House's breath caught. "Are you all right?"

House debated his answer, which gave Horatio the opportunity to be sitting down opposite him and looking at him expectantly by the time he was ready to speak. "This moving slow thing," he said. "When you said you wanted to go slow, I didn't anticipate that you'd want to be at a complete stop."

"I don't," Horatio said. "I wanted to focus on the emotional side of it for a while. Which we've been doing very nicely, I might add."

House couldn't deny that. The lack of sex had given them a chance to actually get to know each other. Now he could list a million things Horatio loved and hated, could probably write an ode to all his little tics and quirks. "At the expense of sex."

"I never said at the expense of sex," Horatio pointed out. "I've personally never been more ready for sex in my life. It's been an interesting exercise in self-control for both of us."

House's jaw dropped minutely. He stared. "An _exercise_ in _self-control_?"

Horatio smiled. "I assumed you'd tell me when you were ready."

"Ready? I didn't want to push you!" House sat back and covered his face with one hand. "Well, these last few months have been a miscommunication of epic proportions."

"Now you know what's next on the agenda to develop." Horatio shook his head and handed House a beer. "How's Wilson?"

"Oh, Wilson's fine. He and Cameron are technically over, but there's still a lot of sexual tension and otherwise unresolved bullshit between them, which is of course an inexhaustible supply of entertainment. Foreman's seeing a nurse in the oncology ward. Chase is...I actually have no idea what Chase is doing." House took a thoughtful sip of the beer. "Maybe he's seeing Cuddy."

Horatio snorted. "A potentially wise career move."

House looked up into the darkening sky. The birds had gone home, and night was rearing its head as the sun retreated beneath the horizon to get some rest and perhaps return to fight another day. "So nothing's changed."

Horatio glanced over at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean nothing's changed. All this...abstinence or whatever you want to call it. It hasn't changed anything, right? I mean..." House couldn't bring himself to voice what naturally followed. How more to sound like a vulnerable child than to ask _do you still want me?_

"We're still together," Horatio said. "I still love you. Even more now, I think, than before. I still need you, Greg. That hasn't changed."

House reached into the pocket of his jeans and fingered the gold band with the fire opal set into it. He had seen it in a store and had bought it entirely on impulse. It had screamed his name and it had reminded him of Horatio; every time the light hit it it kindled flecks deep within the stone to burn as brightly as Horatio's flaming hair.

He released his hold on the ring. Now was not the time. Later. Later he would do it, and he wouldn't be afraid because what did he have to fear? Rejection was rejection. He was used to it.

"Greg," Horatio began.

House sat up abruptly. "What's for dinner?"

* * *

They ate on the porch between the lulls in conversation. Horatio had a nice backyard. It stretched for a couple hundred feet down to a river that he never tired of looking at. It had been difficult, at first, to get used to the idea of being retired. But he had settled down nicely, and he was enjoying the life. What he wasn't enjoying was being alone, and the ring was burning a hole in his pocket.

He'd made a discreet call the week before the wedding and asked Delko to buy it. Delko had done so willingly, and Horatio had collected the ring and paid back the money upon their arrival in Miami. And since then he'd been walking around with it.

It never seemed like the right time. It was always too late in the day, or not late enough. Or they were having a serious conversation. Or maybe they were laughing too much. It was maddening. Horatio didn't understand how anybody ever managed to propose to anyone with all the variables to consider.

"Hey." House's voice broke into his thoughts, and Horatio glanced over. The doctor was looking at him intently. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." Horatio began to chew meditatively on a thumbnail, thinking that he was not anywhere even remotely close to okay and that he was so far from fine that it wasn't even a dot on the horizon.

"Horatio." House reached over and pulled Horatio's hand from his mouth. "What?"

The words spilled out before he could stop himself. "Look, I...we need to talk. I need to ask you something."

In an instant, House was looking unaccountably shifty. "Um..."

"No. I have to." Horatio held House's eyes. "I have to get this out. I have to say it. Okay?"

House looked up, down and everywhere else in the universe before he met Horatio's eyes again. "Okay."

"I..." Horatio didn't know what to say. He stood, pacing the length of the porch slowly, rubbing his neck. Tension made his body ache. He came to a stop in front of House again, still not sure of what he wanted to say but knowing it was coming out one way or the other.

"You know I love you," he said. "You know how much you mean to me."

House nodded without speaking.

"Okay. You know...I wanted this to be special. And amazing. Something you'd remember for the rest of your life. But things just aren't turning out like that. So...I'm just going to go for it, okay?" Horatio didn't wait for an answer. He reached into his pocket and drew out the ring.

It was precisely the same as it had been the moment he'd first seen it while ring-shopping with Delko, but somehow it seemed more beautiful just being in House's presence. Even as far from him as it was, it seemed to draw brilliance from his eyes. And those eyes were now very wide, and those lips parted, as House stared at the ring Horatio was holding gingerly between his forefinger and his thumb.

Horatio's left knee hit the floorboards of the porch with a soft thud. "Greg," he said quietly. "Will you marry me?"

Everything was silent. Nature itself seemed to be hanging on House's answer. And House seemed to be completely incapable of coherent speech. "I...but..." he sputtered, and then he arched up off the chair, digging furiously in the pocket of his jeans.

Horatio waited patiently with no idea of what was going on, and wondered to himself why in the hell he was doing this. And then House opened his hand.

The sky was already dark, but there was enough dim light coming from inside the house for the fires in the stone to ignite. It might as well have been a flame burning in House's hand for all Horatio could tell. But if it was a flame, it was the most beautiful flame he had ever seen. His lips parted. His mind was blissfully, wonderfully blank.

"I was going to ask you to the same thing," House said.

Horatio let out a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding. He didn't know what to say. Fortunately, he didn't have to say anything.

House reached out and took Horatio's left hand in both of his. Their eyes met; House's were almost grey in the darkness. "Yes," he said, and slid the ring onto Horatio's finger.

Horatio took a few breaths to calm himself before turning House's left hand between his. He studied the long fingers, the veins that traversed bone and muscle beneath skin. This was a hand that made music, that drew pictures, that saved lives. This was the hand of a man who would always be his, from now until forever.

Horatio slipped the ring on, anxiously following its course joint by joint until it nestled snugly at the base of House's finger. It was a perfect fit.

"Yes," he said breathlessly. "God, yes."

* * *

"Oh my God," Calleigh said. "I can't believe it. You are?"

Horatio, on the couch, turned away from the brilliant sunshine and belatedly wondered what had happened to his sunglasses. "Yes. We are. It's legal in New Jersey, only they call it a civil union."

"A rose by any other name." He could hear the smile in her voice. "That's wonderful, Horatio. I'm so happy for you. Let me get Eric on the phone for you."

Horatio leaned back into the leather, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he dusted off his pants. House had gotten a call and had left at an ungodly hour after a long night of thoroughly torrid sex from which Horatio was still exhausted. And the sun seemed unusually bright this morning. Or perhaps it was Horatio's decaffeinated eyes which were protesting.

"H." It was Delko, grinning by the sound of it. "Calleigh just told me. Way to go, man."

"Thank you, Eric. Couldn't have done it without you."

"Hey, no problem. So when's the wedding? Uh, ceremony? Thing?"

Horatio smiled. "Wedding will be fine. I'm not sure. When are you going to be able to come up? I know things are hectic for you."

"Um..."

"Shall we say November?"

"I might be able to get a couple days off in November, yeah. I'm really happy for you, H. Congratulations. Tell House for me."

"I will. I'll let you know. Give my love to Calleigh, all right?"

"Yeah, will do."

"Okay. Goodbye." Horatio set down the phone, looked at it for a moment and then dialed House's number to see how things had gone with Wilson.

* * *

"Female, late thirties. Presented with high fever, headache, nausea, confusion –"

"Drugs," Foreman said at once.

"I'm not finished. She also has sensitivity to light and sound."

"Something neurological?" Cameron suggested. "It could be a tumour. Or a bad migraine. Cluster headaches can cause similar symptoms."

House stared at her. "What is wrong with you people today?"

"What are you talking about?" she asked, bewildered.

Chase turned around from where he'd been examining the wall. "Does she have a stiff neck?"

House raised his eyes to the heaven. "Dammit. Definitive proof that there _is_ a God. Yes, Chase, she has a stiff neck."

"Headaches can make you sleep badly," Cameron said.

"Know what else gives you a stiff neck?" House enquired. "Know what is the ultimate diagnostic proof of meningitis?" He turned to Chase. "Do a CSF analysis and, to make Foreman happy, take some blood and do a tox screen. But before you do any of that, get her on empiric antibiotics. Vancomycin and meropenem."

"But –" Cameron began.

"But nothing. Bacterial meningitis has a high mortality rate. You know that as well as I do." House paused. "Seriously, what is going on here?"

"House. House!"

House's eyes snapped open and he realized that he was slumped over on his desk. Wilson was leaning over him, holding out a cell phone that looked a lot like the one House usually kept in the pocket of his jeans.

"House," Wilson said. "It's for you. It's Horatio."

House shook his head and managed to regain the use of a few brain cells. "Horatio?"

"There you are. I was beginning to wonder what happened to you. I called your cell, you didn't answer..."

"So you called Wilson." House grimaced at the pain in his leg and took a Vicodin. "Smart move." He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and nodded to Wilson, mouthing thanks. Wilson gave him a rueful I'm-used-to-this smile and left. "What's up?"

"Eric and Calleigh send their congratulations."

"Oh." House slapped himself in the forehead, which shook him up a little since he had just woken up. "I _knew_ there was something I forgot..."

"Greg..." Horatio said in the disapproving tone of a high school teacher.

"Yeah, I know. It's just...I was tired. So I fell asleep. Which reminds me, I wonder what happened to our patient..."

"Go do something constructive, will you?"

House scratched his cheek and smoothed a thumb over one eyebrow. "All right, all right. I will."

"Good. And tell Wilson."

* * *

"Do you want to hear the good news or the good news?"

Wilson looked up at House with the cutest expression of confusion in the universe. "There's good news? From you? Thank God I'm sitting down."

House rolled his eyes and flopped ungracefully into a chair. "The good news is that my patient has cancer."

"And this is good news?"

"We know what cancer is. We can treat cancer." House raised his eyebrows. "Cancer is always better than a mystery disease. Of course, she didn't take it so well. I don't have that natural gift that you do for telling people they're dying and having them thank me afterwards."

"You always manage to make that sound so terrible." Wilson turned his head and squinted at House with one eye. "You're happy. Is that what that look is? That's the happy look?"

House tried to pull an innocent look and fell laughably short of his intended target. "Maybe."

"And that would have something to do with the other good news." Wilson leaned forward. "Okay. I'm listening. I'm sitting down. Hit me with it."

House held up his left hand.

Wilson's jaw dropped. His eyes widened. "House?"

House kept the left hand up and said nothing.

Wilson stood up and leaned across the desk, reaching out to take House's hand and pull it towards him. He studied the ring, and then sat back down with a sudden exhalation of breath. "Wow," he said. "You're...you're...what do you call that?"

"Engaged, Wilson," House said. "You call it engaged."

"Engaged." Wilson laughed. "I can't believe this. You're seriously gonna do this. You're gonna...you're gonna _marry_ him."

"Yep." House nodded. "Is it starting to bother you now?"

"Bothered isn't the word you're looking for. I'm thinking more along the lines of...wow. You're wowing me more than anything else. Doctor Gregory House contemplating marriage. You'll forgive me if I find this a bit much to take in all at once."

"I'm not contemplating anything. It's happening. We haven't set a date, but it's happening." House arched a defiant eyebrow. "Sure you're not bothered? You look bothered."

Wilson, fortunately, didn't seem irritated by the fact that House was badgering him. "I like Horatio," he said. "I have no problem with Horatio. No problems with his hair, no problems with his gender or your collective sexual preference."

"But you do have a problem," House said unnecessarily.

"My problem is what it has always been. It's you."

Here we go, House thought.

"You're not conventional relationship material. You're damaged, House. You're broken. You know that as well as anyone does – it's not something I should have to point out to you."

"You _don't_ have to point it out," House said, and rapped the end of his cane sharply on the floor. "You think I forgot, Wilson?"

"I know you haven't. What mystifies me is why you seem so confident that this is going to turn out just fine. Look," Wilson added hastily, "I'm not trying to be a pessimist. I'm not trying to be a doomsayer or anything like that. And, to be honest, you _have_ changed. I didn't think anybody could change you, but, well, Horatio apparently has."

House made a rolling motion with his hand.

"I'm just concerned," Wilson said gently. "That's all. I'm concerned that you're both so involved in this that neither of you has a clear view of the other."

House digested this. The point Wilson was making sucked. And the reason it sucked was that he was probably right.

"I have issues," House said eventually. "That's a given. Big issues, most of them. And he has issues. But all our issues combined are nothing we can't handle." He saw Wilson's mouth open and held up a hand. "Trust me on this. I love him. I haven't been able to say that about anyone in a long time, but I can say it about him. This is big, Wilson. This is important."

"And for some reason, you actually care this time." Wilson scrutinized House's face, then nodded. "Okay. If that's how you feel, then I guess we'll work with it. What day are we looking at?"

House was thrown by the change in topic. "What?"

"The wedding, House, what day is the wedding?" Wilson was flipping through his planner. "I'll need to know so I can take a day off."

* * *

For one reason or another – House had ridiculous clinic hours, Miami was having a crime wave and Delko and Calleigh were pretty much stuck – the wedding was postponed continuously right through November. It was eventually decided that come hell or high water, it was going to happen before January hit.

Horatio took it upon himself to investigate the business of the civil union license, and was relieved to find that only one party needed to be present to obtain the license, since the likelihood of being able to tear House away from the hospital was very slim. December was the busiest month in hospital history; House was juggling clinic patients and regular patients and not managing particularly well.

"A justice of the peace will be fine," Horatio said placatingly. "We don't have to do it in front of a priest if you don't want to."

"Okay." House sounded distracted, although harassed was probably a better word. "When?"

"Within the next sixty days." Horatio examined the license and couldn't help but be slightly awed by the fact that the small piece of paper was going to enable him to get married. "How do things look for you?"

"Doesn't matter. I'll make it work." House snapped something at someone, and then said to Horatio, "Call Eric and Calleigh. I'll tell Wilson. We're doing this on Friday."

Horatio paused. It was Wednesday. "This Friday?"

"Yes, this Friday, as in the day after tomorrow, as in Boxing Day. I'm fed up of beating around the bush. Everyone else can take time off and get married and go on honeymoons and have babies...well, I wanna do that too. I'll break it to the ducklings this afternoon and I'll lay it on Cuddy as soon as she gets back in."

Horatio's grip on the phone tightened. "Greg, are you sure about this?"

"Never been more sure of anything in my life," House replied crisply. "Look, things are really hectic right now, so I have to go. But I promise you that everything will be out in the open by the time I get home. And we are getting married on Friday, okay?"

"Okay." The edges of Horatio's mouth curled in a tiny smile. "Okay. I love you."

"I love you too."

* * *

House hung up and met Cameron's eyes. "What?"

She was staring at him. "Did I just hear you say you're getting married on Friday?"

"Mm-hmm." He took the report from her slack fingers and glanced at it. "Wow. That's really extreme leukocytosis."

Cameron put her hand down on top of the report, pressing it against the table and effectively obscuring all the information on it. "You're getting married."

"Didn't I say that already?" House pried two of her fingers off the page. "Okay, she has sepsis. Any organ dysfunction?"

"She's in a lot of pain. Which is perfectly understandable considering she has blood toxicity. Who are you getting married to?"

"Regrettably, that's none of your business." House managed to get the report from under Cameron's hand and scanned the rest of it. "Abdominal pain could be ischemic colitis. Check for rectal bleeding, start her on antibiotics and do a colonoscopy."

"House."

"Cameron! A woman has sepsis and you're standing here asking me about my personal life?" House raised an eyebrow. "Nice priorities."

"Don't you think this is a bit sudden?" She was pulling out her phone. "Were you even seeing someone?"

"I've been seeing someone for a long time," House said truthfully. "Anyway, I intend to have a honeymoon of sorts, so you and your brothers will be in charge of diagnostics while I'm gone."

Cameron had gotten through to Chase. "Chase. She's septic. House thinks there's a possibility of ischemic colitis. Check for rectal bleeding, start her on antibiotics and do a colonoscopy." She hung up. "Honeymoon?"

House rolled his eyes. "Look, I hate it to break it to you, but...I actually have a life. I'm getting married the day after tomorrow and you're not invited."

"Does Jimmy know?"

"Yes, _Jimmy_ knows." House gave her a look. "Cameron. Every moment you stand here postulating is a moment you could be saving another precious life."

She stood up and pointed at him with her pen. "We will talk about this later."

"No, we won't." He was serious now. "There's nothing between us, Cameron. You don't have the right to tell me anything."

She paused, and dropped her eyes. She sighed. "Will you at least tell me her name?" she asked softly.

House took a breath. It was now or never. "His name is Horatio."

Cameron's head snapped up. She stared at him. "What?"

"His name," House repeated patiently, "is Horatio. It's a civil union, Cameron. They're legal in New Jersey now."

"You're..." She stopped. "No way. You're playing with me."

"I'm not playing."

"Horatio," she said. "Horatio."

"Horatio Caine." House willed her to understand, willed her not to freak out completely.

"And...and you love him."

"Yes."

"The way you could never love me."

"And in every other way."

Cameron nodded slowly. "When did you know?"

"When did I know what?"

"That you were...you know."

"Gay?" House quirked an eyebrow and gave a derisive snort. "I'm not gay, Cameron."

"But..."

"I'm in love with a man. That doesn't make me gay."

She was clearly confused. "Okay..." She ran a hand through her hair. "I'm going to go see how our patient is doing."

"You do that."

* * *

Cuddy didn't cope as well. First she laughed because she didn't believe him. Then she was angry because she still didn't believe him. And then he brought in Wilson, and finally she believed him.

She was silent. House waited in equal silence, eyes fixed on the desk, infinitely glad for Wilson's reassuring presence standing beside him. The only thing the oncologist could have done to be any more supporting was to actually reach out and put his hand on his shoulder.

"When do you want off?" Cuddy asked finally.

House remained stiff. "Friday and week after."

"Okay." She wrote something into her diary, then set down the pen. "Fine. You have Friday to the following Sunday off. I want you here at eight o'clock next Monday morning with no excuses. And you _are_ working tomorrow."

House gave a sigh of relief. "Great. Thanks."

* * *

Wilson steered him out of Cuddy's office. "I can't believe that just happened, but I'm going to roll with it anyway because it apparently did. So...Friday?"

"Friday before a justice of the peace. I'll give you a call." House checked his watch. "Oh, would you look at that. My day's over."

"See you tomorrow," Wilson called.

"Yeah," House grunted from by the door. "Unfortunately."

* * *

House was at work on Christmas and couldn't decide why he wasn't more annoyed by that. He supposed he was more surprised than anything else by the sheer number of people who had come in to the clinic with burn injuries from cooking adventures gone wrong.

"How hard is it to bake a turkey?" House enquired as he applied a loose dressing to a middle-aged man's forehead, which was imprinted with three reddened horizontal second-degree burns. "I mean seriously. You put it in, watch the clock, take it out. Where does it become necessary to stick your head in the oven?"

"I didn't stick my head in the oven," the man said miserably. "I overbalanced."

"Overbalanced?" House raised an eyebrow. "Overbalanced and fried your forehead?"

"The dog surprised me."

"The dog surprised you? What is that, some kind of metaphor? How does a dog surprise you badly enough so that you bury your head in an oven?"

The patient flushed. "It's...personal."

House put a few things together even as he was finishing the dressing. "Let me guess. You cook naked."

The man nodded. "And the dog..."

"The dog took a sudden liking to your gonads," House finished. "Okay, you're all done. You have a good Christmas." As the man left the room and started down the hall, he called, as an afterthought, "Keep your clothes on!"

Wilson stuck his head into the exam room. "My God, you're still here."

House rolled his eyes. "How many more patients?"

"Ah..." Wilson did a once-over of the waiting room. "Looks like five. Look, House...you want to go home?"

House eyed the oncologist with not a little suspicion. "I can't go home, I have five more patients. Are you trying to catch me out or something?"

"No, I just..." Wilson fidgeted a little, then stepped inside and put his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. "House, it's Christmas. If you want to go home, I'll cover for you. That's all I'm saying."

"You're serious."

"Yes."

House gave the idea sober consideration. It would be so easy to accept and to stick Wilson there for who knew how many hours, dressing burns and diagnosing colds. But House was different. He had changed.

"No," he said. "It's all right. I think I'll stay."

Wilson looked at him for a long time. "Jesus, Greg," he said at last. "Who are you?"

House sighed. "Well, whoever I am, it sucks. Send in my next patient, will you?"

* * *

House eventually managed to escape to his office for a few moments of relative relaxation and had let Cameron, Chase, and Foreman loose on the clinic patients while he rested his eyes and took his fourth Vicodin of the day.

He felt the vibration before he heard the ringing and pulled the cell phone out of his jeans pocket. "House."

"Greg."

Just the way that 'Greg' had been uttered set alarm bells ringing in House's head. Slow and drunk and wet, the vowel sliding into a groan that House recognized instantly.

"Oh God," House said, trying not to notice that blood flow was beginning to divert from his brain. He glanced through the windows of his office and saw nobody paying attention. "Where are you?"

"On your bed," Horatio replied thickly.

"_What_?"

The reply was amused. "On. Your. Bed."

House's mouth opened of its own accord, and then his door opened and Cameron strode in, looking at a file. "Can we talk?" she asked.

"No!" House said fiercely.

She ignored him. "There's this girl in the clinic with -"

"Maybe I should hang up," Horatio suggested.

"No! You, stay on the phone." House stabbed a finger at the air in front of Cameron, who was taken completely by surprise. "You, twenty seconds." When she continued to stare at him openmouthed, he said, "Five most important words. Now."

"Girl. Fever. Arrhythmia. Headache. Please?"

House snorted. "You _would_ waste one on 'please'. Leave the file, do a tox screen, go away. Far, far away. Alphabetize the lab equipment." He snatched the folder from her hand and made a vehement shooing motion. "Good_bye_." Once he was satisfied she was down the corridor and out of sight, he returned his full attention to the phone. "You're on my bed?"

Horatio was definitely amused. "Did you not understand the first two times?

House chose to ignore this. "What are you doing on my bed?"

Horatio's smile was evident in his voice. "How explicit would you like me to be?"

House felt a dark heat move slowly through his abdomen and settle heavily in his groin. He shifted uncomfortably in the chair, his thighs falling apart to accommodate the growing weight between them. "Oh God," he said, swallowing.

"That's the second time you've said that. You're repeating yourself. That's never..." Horatio's voice trailed off into harsh breathing.

House suddenly felt weak. "Again - what are you doing on my bed?"

"Again - how much do you want to hear?"

"Fuck," House said. "Everything."

"Let me create an atmosphere for you." House closed his eyes and let himself sink into what Horatio was saying, let himself drown in that voice. "It's dark. Your room is empty except for one solitary retired forensic analyst with disturbingly red hair lying on your bed. He's in a suit, all black, and you know how you like him in a suit. Please stop me if I'm boring you."

House managed a dry-mouthed, "Nuh-uh."

"Our retired forensic analyst is not asleep. He's thinking of a certain eccentric genius doctor...and thinking of this doctor has gotten our retired forensic analyst _very_, very aroused. One hand holds the phone, while the other slides down -"

"Five minutes," House said suddenly, already getting out of the chair. "_Five_ minutes, Horatio. Can you do that? Can you wait five minutes?"

"If you hurry."

"Get your hands off yourself. Nobody touches you but me, you get that? Hands _off_." Hands trembling, House snapped the phone shut and headed for the elevator.

* * *

His house was dark, which didn't surprise him. He parked the bike, unlocked the door and limped urgently down the corridor to the bedroom, unsure of what he was going to find but knowing he was going to love it anyway.

Horatio was sitting on the edge of the bed, still fully clothed. He had the most impressive erection House had ever been privileged to see on anyone.

"Wow," was all House could say.

Horatio smiled. "For you."

House was already shrugging off the leather jacket. "Best. Christmas. _Ever_."


	12. Chapter 12

Boxing Day morning dawned bright and clear and cold, and was heralded by the ringing of the phone. House roused himself from sleep to take the call, since Horatio might as well have been in a coma for all the life he was showing. It was Delko and Calleigh calling from a motel at to say they were in and fairly rested. House told them the time and place, sent Wilson a text saying basically the same thing, and went back to sleep.

He woke up fully a couple of hours later because of the sun in his eyes, and found that the bed was empty. He stretched out a hand. The sheets were still warm. He strained his ears, and heard the faint sounds of water running.

House made his way into the bathroom slowly, aware that his leg wasn't hurting as much as usual today and hoping to keep it that way for as long as possible. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and opened the shower door.

Horatio was standing under the water, head bowed and water pouring from his hair, rubbing his neck. He glanced up at House through the veil of droplets and smiled before tilting his head back to rinse his face. House, simultaneously amused and aroused, stood uncertainly by the door, his eyes jealously noting how the water flowed so smoothly along the contours of Horatio's body.

Ridiculous to be jealous of water. But how else to put it? House wanted to be the tiny beads that clung to Horatio's eyelashes, wanted to be the thick ropes that slung from his hair when he shook his head, wanted to be the water that sheeted down Horatio's long flat stomach.

"Greg." House looked up to see Horatio smiling at him. "You're staring."

"You're beautiful," House said without any trace of sarcasm or flippancy.

Horatio stepped out from under the shower and took hold of House's shoulders, pulling him into the enclosure. He kissed him, wet hands pulling at House's T-shirt, and House, who was fast getting drenched anyway, began to strip off his sodden clothes as though his life depended on it. It was mere minutes before he was up against the wall and Horatio was licking his way down House's chest.

"Horatio," House gasped, inhaling water. He began to cough. "Wait a second, I want to ask you something."

Horatio reached up and switched off the water, then put a calming hand on the back of House's neck. "Greg."

House managed to get the offending liquid out of his lungs – or at least out of his throat. "Sorry," he said, coughing again. "I wanted to ask...well...if you wanted to be the pitcher."

Horatio arched an eyebrow. "The pitcher."

"Yeah. I mean, I'm always the pitcher. So I figured maybe you might want to pitch."

"And you would be interested in catching?"

House smiled. "Horatio...I'm going to say this once, okay? And only once. So you might want to listen." He paused. "I'd do anything for you."

"Okay." Horatio grinned. "Okay. Then I will definitely pitch on this fine morning."

* * *

Horatio took care of breakfast while House sipped coffee and rubbed his thigh, which had definitely been under some strain during their shower session. Waffles were on the menu for breakfast, and as Horatio was feeling in an unusually merry mood, he put blueberries in them.

"How are you feeling?" he asked as he brought the plates to the table, not bothering to conceal his smile.

House shot him a look that spoke volumes and downed the rest of the coffee. "I'm in pain," he grunted in as sour a manner as he could muster, but Horatio saw the smirk. "I need a Vicodin."

"What else is new?"

"Not for my leg."

Horatio snorted and helped himself to a waffle. "Come on. It wasn't that bad."

"I never said anything was _bad_. I believe the word I used was 'pain'." House poured himself another cup of coffee and had a bite of waffle. "Christ, this is good. Now I remember why I'm marrying you."

"And it of course has nothing to do with the fact that I banged your brains out earlier."

House almost choked. "Would you stop doing that?" he asked, brushing half-chewed pieces of waffle from the back of one hand with the other. "I'm trying to eat and you're talking about sex. How do you expect me to concentrate long enough to swallow?"

Horatio grinned.

House facepalmed. "Oh for God's sake..."

"So what are you wearing?" Horatio asked, taking pity on House and deciding to move the conversation in a direction that would hopefully allow them both to eat in peace.

"Tux?" House shrugged. "I don't know. It's in front of a justice of the peace, it's not in a church. We don't _have_ to be formal..." He trailed off and stuffed a forkful of waffle into his mouth. "What are you wearing?"

Horatio steepled his hands and touched his lips to his fingers. "White."

"White?"

"White." Horatio smiled. "It's a suit, and it's white. You...I think you should wear what you always wear. T-shirt, jeans, blazer."

House looked doubtful. "You in a suit and me in jeans? Come on, they'll throw us out of the office for an obvious display of heterosexuality by not having enough fashion sense to be gay!"

Horatio opened both hands. "Surprise me."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. Surprise me."

* * *

Horatio sat in the front of the Hummer and studied the fountain in front of the justice's office thoughtfully. The license was folded neatly in the inner pocket of his jacket. He checked his watch. They were early.

"How're you feeling, H?" Delko asked. He was dressed simply but elegantly, in black pants and a white shirt. Calleigh, who was in the backseat, wore the same thing. "Nervous?"

"No," Horatio said, which wasn't entirely true. "I've been waiting for this all my life." And then he sat up a little straighter as the convertible swung into the parking lot. "Here we go."

* * *

House had driven to the office of the justice of the peace with the top up, and now he pushed the button to lower it. Afternoon sunlight poured down on him as he hefted the cane and got out of the car.

Delko slid out of the Hummer, grinning. "House."

"Hey." House squinted in the bright light and gave what he hoped came off as a calm and confident smile. He nodded to Calleigh, who had also just emerged. She was unreasonably pregnant; House judged the size and position of her bump and predicted twins. Probably a boy and a girl.

Horatio jumped down from the backseat, blinding in a white suit. His shirt was black. His hair was windblown. He looked incredible.

House leaned on his cane and tried to look nonchalant, but he saw the way Horatio was looking at him. House was in black. Black pants, black shirt, no jacket. He had taken a good look at himself in the mirror before he'd settled on it, trying to be objective. The effect was sleek and somehow dangerous.

Horatio came to a halt in front of him. "Greg." The way he said House's name told him he was more than impressed. "I like."

House smiled. "You look great."

There was the sound of an engine, and a Mustang pulled into the spot next to the Corvette. Wilson climbed out and ran both hands back through his hair as though trying to get it to behave. "Sorry I'm late," he said breathlessly. "You wouldn't believe the traffic."

"You're not late," House said, glancing at his watch. "You're right on time." He turned to Horatio and offered him his arm. "Shall we?"

* * *

Silence prevailed as House and Horatio stood before the justice of the peace, broken only by the old man's voice as he conducted the ceremony – a ceremony that was barely a ceremony at all, it was so short and to the point.

"We are here to join Horatio Caine and Gregory House in civil union." The justice turned to Horatio. He was a withered old soul, with long white hair and wise dark eyes. "Do you, Horatio Caine, take Gregory House, to be united as one in civil union?"

Horatio reached for House's hand. "I do."

"And do you, Gregory House, take Horatio Caine, to be united as one in civil union?"

House returned the gentle pressure of Horatio's fingers. "I do."

"And there are no objections?" The justice looked first at Delko and then at Wilson. Neither said anything, but both smiled. "Very well. Then repeat after me...I, Horatio Caine..."

Horatio turned to House and looked up into his eyes. "I, Horatio Caine, do take you, Gregory House, to be my spouse in our civil union, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

The justice nodded to House. "I, Gregory House..."

House took a deep breath. "I, Gregory House, do take you, Horatio Caine, to be my spouse in our civil union, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

"By the power vested in me by the state of New Jersey," the justice pronounced gravely, "I hereby join you in civil union." And now he smiled. "You may kiss your husband."

Horatio laid one hand on House's chest over his heart. "I love you," he whispered.

"And I you." House leaned down and kissed him.

* * *

"So what's the plan?" Calleigh asked as they walked out to the parking lot after all the legal documents had been signed. "Honeymoon in Vegas?"

"Probably not," Horatio admitted with a sigh. "We haven't made any plans."

"I'd say we could go on a roadtrip, but I think you've seen enough of the road to last you until well into the afterlife." House glanced at Horatio for confirmation and received it. "Yep. As I thought."

"Where did you two go on your honeymoon?" Horatio asked.

"Week in Palm Springs," Delko said with a grin. "It was nice."

"I certainly enjoyed it." Calleigh laced her fingers into Delko's. "Well, whatever you settle on doing, I do hope you have fun." She smiled, and gave Horatio a hug. "Congratulations again."

"Thank you." Horatio hugged her back, and shook hands with Delko. "Eric."

"You feel free to come down to Miami anytime, okay?" Calleigh was hugging a very surprised House. "Congratulations. I'm very happy for you both."

"Thanks." House was clearly at a loss for words.

Delko grasped House's hand. "Keep in touch, all right?"

Horatio watched as the Hummer pulled out into the road, and Wilson, who had been silent all the time, chose this moment to speak. "So you're going to spend your honeymoon in New Jersey?"

House snorted. "And you would naturally have a better idea."

"Naturally." Wilson pulled an envelope from his pocket. "Of course, it would have been nice if you'd told me earlier so I wouldn't have had to clear my savings for this. This is my wedding present, if you want to call it that, to both of you."

House frowned. "What in the..." He got the envelope open and stopped, staring into it as though it held the secrets of the universe. "Jimmy."

"Tickets to San Diego," Wilson explained to Horatio. "Round-trip."

House looked up, wearing the most uncharacteristic expression of shellshock. "I..."

"Thank me later," Wilson said, and smiled. "Have some fun, House. You've earned it."

House was obviously too bewildered to speak. He tried to say something, faltered, and settled on a nod. Then, as though he'd decided that that wasn't quite enough, he reached out and put a hand on Wilson's shoulder, giving it a soundless squeeze.

Wilson seemed to translate this effortlessly. "Oh, stop with the effusive gratitude. You're welcome."

"Thank you," Horatio said quietly.

"You want to thank me?" Wilson jerked his chin towards House. "Make sure he takes a break. For him it's all about speed...moving from one thing to another, never slowing down or stopping because then he might have to contemplate how he's spent all these years not really living. If you can do that, I won't make him pay me back."

Horatio laughed. "I'll do my best."

"I know." Wilson held out a hand. "Congratulations, Horatio. Take care of him."

"I will."

Wilson turned to House. "I'm happy for you," he said seriously, and gripped House's hand. "Behave yourself."

House had recovered enough to flash a grin. "Right."

Wilson rolled his eyes and got into his car. "Good luck to you both," he called out of the window as he was reversing. "And don't drink the water."

Horatio looked at the taillights of the Mustang as it drove away. Dusk was encroaching on the horizon, and the air had a mildness that was unusual for this time of year.

"So," he said. "What now?"

House looked down at him. "Does it matter?"

Horatio considered this. He slid an arm around House's waist, fingers slipping into the hip pocket of the black slacks. "That depends. Are you happy?"

"I'm happy," House said, and his lips twitched in what could have been a smile. "Are you?"

"Yes." Horatio held up House's keys and dangled them in front of his face with an impish twinkle in his eyes. "Come on. Let's go."

"Where are we going?" House asked as he got into the passenger seat. The breeze was threading its way through his hair, and somehow the lines on his face seemed less noticeable than they had been all along.

Horatio started the engine. "I don't know. Are you with me?"

House smiled. "I'm with you."

They were both smiling as the convertible pulled out of the lot and into the fast approaching darkness.


End file.
